investing for the future

This past weekend I was in Texas with the Mystechs. We were in Austin, Denton, and Dallas. While in Texas I made my first investment into the my dream career.

That's right, friends, find me some virgins to hire cause I've taken my first steps towards owning and running my very own:



Unicorn Ranch!

After some deliberation I decided that I would need to raise both good and evil unicorns. How does one distinguish one type from the other before they are old enough to start showing the rainbow or skull pattern on the flank?

The box suggests asking the unicorn following questions:

1. Do you like to prance through meadows?

2. Have you ever spent all day chasing butterflies and rainbows?

3. Is your favorite sound a laughing brook?

4. Do you believe the children are our future?

5. Are fairies your friends?

6. Do you go around impaling Teddy bears and baby seals?

7. Have you ever dreamed of ruling the underworld?

8. Are you still bitter you weren't invited on the ark?

9. Have you ever used you hooves to bludgeon the weak and innocent?

10. Do you occasionally breathe fire?

I leave it to you to figure out what kind of unicorn you are. It's a question each of us has to ask ourselves in a private moment.

Free Rice

I was about to go to bed when I came across an entry on JV's lj in which she said that she had spent part of the day on FreeRice.com And as this is the second time I have heard tell of this site, I wandered over to check it out for myself.

From October 7 to November 13 the site has donated through the help of web advertising: 1,712,371,750 grains of rice.

How many bowls or bags or pounds do you think that is?

And so, Dear Employer,

I am weary today because at a very early part of this morning which was for me, yesterday night, I reached a vocab level of 42 and donated 560 grains of rice. Perhaps I should just send money or bags of rice to the UN World Food Program directly in the future.

Hugs and Rock,

Me

such a late update

So. I did learn the choreography. And I slapped on some zombie makeup and went out to Tompkins Square park and took part in Thrilling the World.

And according the website, at least unofficially, a new world record has been set. 1,722 people in 52 cities on 5 continents danced simultaneously to "Thriller" at the same time.

There is Youtube video but I was in the very far back corner of the formation so there is the occasional glimpses of my hair or my elbow but very little else. Alas.

Having a goofy thing like this to prepare for, focus on, look forward to. Having an excuse to dance around the house. Taking time to actively connect my brain to the coordinated movement of my body. Having "Thriller" be my internal soundtrack for a week. And doing one of the many ridiculous things that appeal to me that I usually find out about after the fact - well I tell ya, it was grand. Really grand.

I think I am starting to get the hang of the zombie makeup. Now I need to work on the bloody gaping wounds. Next time.

Thrill the World

On Sunday I watched the movie "13 going on 30" which I liked very much. But more on that later. Among the many scenes that I love in the movie, I loved the Thriller dance scene at the party. It got me thinking about great dance scenes from movies. But more on that later.

Thriller doesn't happen to be a video that I remember all that well because as a child I did not have cable. In fact, as an adult I don't either.

So I went to YouTube to try to find the video for study because it seems like I cannot actually call myself a child of the 80's if I don't know how to do the most influential dance sequence of my generation.

And there I stumbled across a 40 part instructional series on doing the Thriller dance.

Someone is trying to set a new Guinness World record for most people simultaneously doing the thriller dance at once. The current record is 62 people in Toronto, Canada.

And they are trying to beat that this year. The project is called: Thrill the World. For the 25th anniversary of the release of the album people will convene globally to dance for 5 minutes to the radio version of Thriller - all dancing the same agreed on choreography at times that synch up to 6pm Sat Oct 27, 2007 Toronto time.

Of course I hear about this at the last minute and am trying to figure out if I can locate a Guinness registered location near me and if I can learn that choreography in three days.

If you've heard the details of an event in the NYC let me know.

Shaking it off - the old and new

Strangely I have been in New York long enough that I describe certain modes of being as reminiscent of my "Old New York Life." My old New York life had a lot in common with the way I felt on my first Mystechs tour.

I don't know where it went.

The little things have been all that my life is about. The little things are not my strong suit. At the start it was kind of interesting. A challenge. After about a year it feels like death by a thousand papercuts. The little things have been tripping me up and getting me down.

It was one thing when I felt that I was teeming with money, my every free moment was spent in the pursuit of happiness or at least distraction.

And now I feel broke all the time and I pack a lunch to bring to work. I feel tired all the time and all I want to do is sleep late, sit at home, watch TV, and fall asleep on the couch.

Oddly, while I have been feeling broke I have taken to going to the Farmer's Market on the weekends. It's mind bogglingly expensive. And the bags I walk back with are mindbogglingly heavy. But walking around and touching produce and then buying it is fun. Very different from the grocery store. Although, you know how I love that too.

And I tell myself that I am doing something good. Reducing the miles on my food. Supporting local growers. Getting out into my community. And all that good hippy stuff.

Mindbogglingly expensive produce offers it's own powerful incentives to cook or some other form of food preparation. I bought a loaf of bread for $5 on Saturday - mindboggling.

And I made the most amazing grilled cheese sandwich with that bread. It may very well have been the best grilled cheese sandwich of my life. My soul felt nourished with its consumption. This experience may be irreproduceable. Especially considering that dire and desperate hunger probably played some role in my perception of the deliciousness. But seriously I think this might be my greatest accomplishment since moving to NY.

Inevitably the purchase of produce on Saturday leads to a mad late night effort to cook a little something on Sunday. Tonight it was blackeyed peas with stewed tomaters and brown rice. Also a can of creamed corn + frozen corn.

Later this week hopefully some ratatouille 'cause I bought eggplants and perhaps tilapia tacos 'cause I saw someone make them in TV and they looked gooooood.

Among the issues in my life I have been searching for a dentist. It's a dire need. Not knowing how to go about it, I have been trying to comb through doctoroogle.com in search of a dentist.

I started knitting my second sweater (the first one was a total fiasco and is still unfinished.) only to find after finishing the front part that None of the rest of the yarn I own matches what I have used. So I am now seeking a yarn shop to buy a bunch of skeins of some complementary or close to matching and compatible stuff. Apparently, my second sweater will also be a total fiasco, though I hope to finish it.

Went to the Mustard Plug show on Saturday. I had it in my head to be up front next to the stage. Lots of shoving and bruising and pushing and leaning. Lots of idiots crowd surfing. It was great. Somehow spiritually purifying. Plus, there's no time to think about the little things when you are trying not to get knocked down and trampled. At last - distraction.

another talented bastard

Andrew Mall has a new issue of livingproof. Issue #5: Rapprochement

"These words used to be songs, songs that we screamed along with on the way home from a show, dark highway behind and the future, bright and clear and mysterious, ahead. I knew all the words once, and while that is no longer true, I still instinctively retain the triumphant choruses and the painful confessions, no matter how much time has passed in the interim.

The bands that sang these songs are no more, and in many ways neither are those of us who sang along. We are different people now than we were then, but we also have the luxury of memory and nostalgia to remind us what it once felt like to care so muhc for a single thing that the pain was palpable. This zine is dedicated to the people we used to be, and the bands we used to love." - Andrew Mall

"Sure there are sections that may not appeal to those of you who are unfamiliar with Rainer Maria, but I think most everyone can appreciate the kind of love for a band that results in the type of self-flagellation on display in these pages. So please, do your best to read beyond the words: think about your favorite band, the lessons you learned from them, the ways in which you've built your life around these lessons, the memories they inspired, and how it felt when they broke up." - Andrew Mall


And I am a puddle to the words on his pages and not even halfway through the thing. Talented bastard.

His site is here.

serious questions

If I choose to spend time with the one I love rather than the one that loves me, does that make me a masochist?

The other way to summarize my resume

In conversation with SE, I admit to the fact I am 37 and the job I have now is really the first proper job that I have had. I have only been working in the real world for a bit over a year.

And his reply was that he thought this was something to be proud of having accomplished in my life. A comment which certainly gave me pause.

I can bring home the bacon

As a child I watched the Enjoli perfume ads.

"I can bring home the bacon
Fry it up in a pan
and never let you forget you're a man
'cause I'm a woman, Enjoli."

Somehow despite my best efforts it's one of those things that lodged into my brain as a model for womanhood.

And now I am at the point where one is unlikely to call me a young woman or girl and would likely consider me to be in the category of woman. I find that I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and make an effort to try to make a man feel like a man. The problem is, I haven't figured out how one manages to do all three simultaneously. I can bring home the bacon but that means I don't have time to fry it. And with the addition of interacting with the other gender - well - how does anyone manage to get any damn sleep around here?

There must be a trick to it. SD recently showed me a trick to dealing with those plastic grocery bags for produce. They are so difficult to get open sometimes. "Lick, pinch, and twist." Seriously it's that easy. One might think that this series of verbs would help in other endeavors but I think that varies widely in the population.

So there must be a trick to it. Maybe one of you out there knows it. Maybe it's as simple as three verbs in a row. Maybe it comes in a bottle, like it did in the 70's.

My other model for womanhood was the Charlie ads.
"Kinda young kinda now, Charlie
Kinda free kinda wow, Charlie"

Y'know wearing pants suits and being sassy and flirty.

It was all kind of muddled and confusing yet so heady and glamorous to try to imagine emulating.

What do young girls today see in the media and envision to be their models of womanhood? The Pussycat Dolls? Skimpy outfits, pelvic thrusts, and booty shaking. It's a whole new world. A bit beyond me, really. Let us offically stop calling me girl or young woman, then.

looking back

long ago
long long ago
when we were young and foolish and open hearted
we used to walk and talk and laugh and dream
we used to believe in love and trust everything
it was all good. it was going to be fine

long ago
long long ago
we used to fall in love so hard that we didn't recognize our own faces in the mirror.
we used to suffer the loss of love as starvation of the body and lay alone in our beds like they were rafts afloat on a sea of sadness.
we used to go to parties that weren't parties until a window was broken.
it was all good. it was going to be fine

long ago
long long ago
how I wish my arms reached far enough to wrap them around us back then.
we didn't need it then as much the need i feel to do it now.
it was all good. it was going to be fine.

it still is.

this post might make me a hater

I don't know what irritates me more:

A guy who worships a woman as a goddess because she knows how to make a casserole or a woman who will let a guy worship her for knowing how to make a casserole.

Puh-lease!

Don't get me wrong, I love a good tuna casserole as much as the next Midwestern philosophers daughter.

But let's face it, if you add a can of cream of mushroom soup, no one cares what else is in that baking dish.

Too much sleep too much drink

The King of Brooklyn deigned
to let me to sit beside him on the train.
His tattoo artist has a lovely cursive hand.
Sprawled all across his body and on limbs

Publicly visible.

I thought to ask him for a referral
but thought it wiser to hold my tongue
and let His Majesty enjoy a ride through the bowels of his County unfettered.
Royal and proud he sits in green robes and black hood
listening to songs of his minstrels echoing through from the very recent past.

At the end of the day no matter the hour
I take the train back under ground,
under water
over land

I ride

And tired and weary as I may be
no matter the day

As I step out and walk up the stairs into the County of Kings
I feel the weight of the worry, the wary, the doubt,
the anxiety,
the rush, the noise, the volume, the density,
the intensity,
the rage, the smell - all of it

melt away

And walking home I hear a song I have never heard by a band I didn't know I loved

And I skip and dance around drunks and dog walkers
under the trees on the sidewalk
along the width of the numbered streets and avenues
marveling at the mysterious ratio of this width to the height of the brownstones of my neighbors - aged hipsters, former philosophers, peaceniks, smart investors, the dog and stroller crowd, and the original authentic locals.

A weight is lifted and I can feel my heart, my breath, the sweat, the whisper, the laughter. A smile spread from the corner of my mouth.

I have come home at last to myself.

the danger of books

I get off the train and onto the street on my way to the office when I see a young man walking towards me who looks very familiar.

This is because he is familiar. We went to college together. And so I said hello. Which is unusual for me. I am generally the type to slink into the corner and hide, pretend that I don't know a person. Because in truth, I am hopelessly shy.

We spoke ever so briefly for maybe 10 seconds. Blah blah blah.
I notice that he keeps looking down at the book I have in my hand.

It's an evolutionary biology book about reproductive strategy in all manner of organisms - from fruit flies to flatworms to chickens to humans - specifically looking at differences in strategy between males and females, more specifically with a particular emphasis on the question of whether non-monogamy has any evolutionary benefits for females. There's some crazy stuff going on out there outside our own species, kids. And apparently, for some organisms, the battle is not necessarily won upon consumation of "desire" ...

So any way, this is my morning train reading these days. Cool.

But back to the appearance of this book. The cover of this book is hot pink and the title emblazoned along the spine in large curvise text is: "Promiscuity"

There was no time to explain the whole title: "Promiscuity: An evolutionary history of sperm competition" although I doubt that would have helped.

There is no time. No time to discuss. No time to explain. No time for much beyond our simple exchange. We are each headed in opposite directions. We say good bye and part company.

And I walked away wondering how one might judge a person based on judging the title and spine design of her book.

SWAN!

I watched "Hot Fuzz" last night.
Loved it.

Intensely gross in parts like "Shaun of the Dead."
The twist at the end is ridiculously hilarious.

I have a crush on Simon Pegg.
Y'know what else ... he's my age.

*flutter*

Sunday in the Nabe

In my hood there is a place called Bonnie's Grill. Bonnie's has a reputation for serving a hell of a burger. Last Sunday I took myself over there to check it out for myself. Long counter, some tables, the football game - Bills vs. Patriots.

I got seated in the back and read "Good Omens" (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman) and had me a cheddar burger medium with lettuce, tomato, red onion, ketchup, spicy mayo, mustard, a bottle of Lone Star, and a side of fries.

The burger was fresh off the grill. Charred and Black on the outside like a soul in hell yet bleeding. As I ate it I started watching the game and ... for the first time in my life I understood what was going on.

It was great. But I'm sure my cholesterol level and my waistline wish I had more cravings for fresh vegetables.

same as it ever was except without the empire waist

Seems like every time I go to a party, happy hour - any kind of largish social outing I feel like an extra in a Jane Austen novel.

There's just so much going on. A rich cast of characters each with their own backstory and their own particular motivations and foibles. If you are new to the situation, you watch and try to suss out what's what. If it's your crew, you sit back and enjoy the show or maybe reach in and stir the pot. If you have a guide, he or she will give you the inside track on the comings and goings of the evening. (my fav)

Under the right circumstances it's better than TV.

saving and cravings

For the past week or more I have been thinking about money. And feeling like I need to worry about my lack of it. Simultaneous and probably related to this I have been feeling horrible food cravings.

I get all kinds of impetuous notions about what I want. But usually in regard to purchasing things or food or drink - I can talk myself out of it for a spell. Sometimes long enough that I forget for extended periods of time.

This has not been of those times.

The money situation is actually not bad and I was fretting about the fact that it is not better. Fretting instead of acting. There's a lot of financial jargon out there. I think it's all there to obscure the facts. And for lack of one definition or another, I am mired in confusion. What I have started to notice is that the articles on money management and the pamphlets from the company that handles my 401k are remarkably specific about some of the factors that I should consider up until the part where they say I should invest the money in a mutual fund or stocks or something. And from there they get remarkably vague.

Which is a bit troubling because that is the part where your money is supposed to be doing something for you. That is the part where the risk is. That whole past performance is not an indicator of future returns - blah blah blah mess. Added to that I am getting the distinct impression that investing is about making money from debt. Well, okay so far in my web surfing investing seems to be about debt, the perception of the value of a thing and speculation on the future perception of the value of that thing. Such that a company can be making money and growing but be considered an utter disappointment because while growing and making money it performs below expectations.

And on the food side. I have craved and then gotten:

Fried chicken from Dirty Bird To Go. That's some damn good chicken. The buttermilk dipped aspect is a world apart from KFC (which I also love). Fried chicken with mac and cheese and broccoli.

A mango lassi, Saag Paneer, and Naan. I can think of few things as comforting.

Sticky toffee pudding ice cream from Haagen Dazs. The cake pieces are amazing. Because in ice cream form the cake bits are my idea of ice cream cake. Rich cake drenched in ice cream and then frozen. The cake pieces are not blended in, they are integral to the structure and consistency of the ice cream itself.

Raspberries are not in season and at the Farmer's Market they cost an arm and a leg. Would that I had more limbs to surrender.

Someone in a food lab somewhere has engineered a seedless personal sized watermelon. Even in this reduced form I eat it for days. Days of welcome fruity leftovers.

My last recent craving has not been fulfilled properly. I have been craving steak. The trouble is that I have not a clue what to do with red meat. So I bought a steak and fried it up. Had it with broccoli and a microwaved potato and a beer. Had I been watching Monday Night Football and grilled it - I would have been the very model of those strapping manly Midwestern fellas that I left behind. There are days where I miss them too. That's a different category of craving ....

The steak didn't do so well. But I am happy to report that my ability to make a gravy of the drippings has greatly improved. If I use chicken broth or cooking wine and avoid adding balsamic vinegar next time, I think I will be on to something very lovely.

The cravings have settled down for now. And the worries about money as well.
Of course, I had to spend money to accomplish this so who knows, this whole thing might just bounce right back at me.

I needs a brand new bag

I have been too moody to post. But it seems that this is where I am at right now so I might as well go with it.

With the chewing gum incident I have been using my alternate backpack and a teeny tiny bag in place of my purse.

Today the strap broke on my teeny tiny purse. So I am in a quest for the perfect purse. It needs to be light and sturdy. It needs to be big enough to fit:

Wallet, keys, cell phone, map of Manhattan, subway map, work ID, a pen, a book of matches, a minipad, and chapstick.

An even more perfect purse would also fit my datebook, ipod, a comb, 1-4 hairpins, a change purse, eyeliner and a tube of lipgloss.

And even more perfect it would also fit a book for the train, a peanut butter sandwich, a box of raisins, and perhaps even a light sweater.

Purses are a very big deal in this city. You seen all kinds of bags worn by all kinds of women here. With all the commuting I think some of us live out of our bags, at least during the work week (and sometimes on the weekend as well). Giving the term "bag lady" an slightly different spin.

Fashion statement, means to transport, additionally, a purse can be used to create a zone of personal space around you. That's what the really big bags are great for.

I discovered this for myself one day on a museum visit with a friendly young man. I was carrying a fabulous bag that the RM had given me for my birthday. A stylish, hip, and enormous green bag from Brooklyn Industries so large that I could carry what I have listed above in scenario three, a Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings, and a pony keg.

The friendly young man would move in close to me as we stood looking at this painting or that sculpture only to be thwarted by my bag. He would bump into it and I would step slightly to the side saying, "Oh. Excuse me."

Almost as good as wearing a hoop skirt with sensitive touch sensors all around it that triggers a very loud personal alarm. "Oh. Excuse me."

killed my yoga buzz or why singapore is cool

Today I wore a favorite shirt and some favorite pants to work. Towards the end of the day I discovered that I had someone else's chewing gum on the back of my backpack, on my purse, on the back of my favorite shirt and my favorite pants.

Gross. Way gross.

They are all sitting in the freezer where I hope the gum will harden and crack and be easy to get off of everything.

The weird thing is I can't remember it happening. I can't remember a moment in which I said to myself, "Shit. I just got gum all over myself."

we have no Mandala today

Over the weekend I met up with CK. We ordered ourselves a three curry sampler at a local joint and then went to the Rubin Museum of Art. It's a museum dedicated to Himalayan art. I went because I had heard that there was an artist, Tenzing Rigdol, creating a Giant Sand Mandala in nine days with a ceremonial destruction on the last day.

I really wanted to see it. Lately, I have been noticing a lack of compassion in myself. I have been feeling restless and impatient and anxious and I thought maybe being witness to this ritual would do something for me. Being in its presence might be cleansing. But for every one of the nine days of the Mandala I was an utter spank and never manged to see it.

The day CK and I went to the museum, Tenzig had left for the day and the room where the Mandala was being created was being used for the screening of a movie.

So we just wandered around the museum. CK told me stories about Butan and about some of the art that we were wandering around. There was an exhibit up called "The Missing Peace: Artists consider the Dalai Lama." There's a neato virtual tour of it online. I was very struck by the piece by Jenny Holzer "It Is in Your Self Interest to Find a Way to Be Very Tender."

There is something about a statement that is chiseled into marble. Forgive the pun but in that medium I found myself giving the words greater weight. And thinking about them more slowly and a lot more carefully.

The Rubin has a really lovely lounge area. Perfect for a first date.

But alas, no Mandala for me. On telling this story to KS, he came up with the idea of making a Mandala myself.

Here is what I could find on the topic of "How to make a sand mandala." I am intrigued by this prospect.

Wanna make a Mandala with me?

please hang up and try again

First the upper right button started to flake out.
Then the "3" key started to give.
Now the end call key is starting to flake out.

I cannot hang up on people now.
I have to wait for them to hang up on me.

Makes me wonder if there is a lesson that my cell phone is trying to teach me while on its last legs.

ears tuned slightly to the left

Despite my disappointment with my late night screening of Xanadu, the radio in my head was blasting that movie soundtrack last week. And today for some reason the internal music network is fixated firmly on that song by Belly: Feed the Trees.

Except that I have been mishearing the lyrics in my head.

The song goes: "I know all this and more."

In my head the lyrics are: "I want all this and more."
That's been my problem all along. I want all this and more.
Probably exacerbated by the fact that I don't really know what I want and so I ask for everything.

And those of you who know me, know that I really have a hell of a lot. Too much, even.

But my desire stretches beyond things to intangibles.

I turn 37 in a month. Mortality pokes me in the ribs and reminds me that time is short and I am no spring chicken and what the hell have I been doing lately anyway?

I am not comfortable with this number although MH told me yesterday that 37 is good a number numerologically. A prime number whose digits are also prime numbers. The thought gives some comfort to my noisy head. A prime number. Not a multiple. It is indivisible into equal integer values. It is a number to be considered as a whole as an irreducible factor in itself. Looked at from that vantage, maybe it won't be so bad. But it just seems like a grown up number. A big number.

No one was more surpised than she to discover

Your Score: All-out Cynic

You are 57% absurd!

You are a cynic at heart. On the grounds of cold, harsh logic you are critical of ideas such as predestined fate and the afterlife. You have most likely had an experience of the Absurd - a realisation that in the absence of any fathomable purpose for our existence, everything we do is ultimately futile. You see this as a depressing but unavoidable fact.

But don't turn in to a total nihilist yet! If life is random and absurd, then there can be nothing more absurd than trying to fight against it. Try to go with the flow and accept the way things are - who knows, you might even enjoy the ride. And what's to stop you making your own meaning out of whatever it is you enjoy in this crazy world?

Link: The Absurdism Test written by Three-Fifteen on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

This is just a thinly veiled attempt to lure you onto my online dating site.

the late night observation

I was talking to a friend of mine last night who said that the curious thing about publishing is that it is an industry in which is it very easy to shift blame. Because of this it is a very political business.

I could spell out the implications but I won't. Suffice it to say, I think he might be right.

She wikipeed on me. It was way cool.

KS and I were discussing the transition Google made from being a proper name to a verb. Somehow the word lends itself well to being made a verb. From there it occurred to us that lots of people use other website but these sites don't have names that become verbs. When's the last time you yahooed anything? Or hotmailed to your hearts content?

The site that we felt might be worthy of becoming a verb was wikipedia. The problem is that this word does not immediatly lend it self to a verb-like conjugation in the english language. So we came up the word wikipee - a verb meaning to look soemthing up on wikipedia.

Example: I can't chat with you, Ze. I am wikipeeing the word "microfinance."

Exmaple: Can't remember Godel's Theorem? You could wikipee it.

Exmaple: I am so tired. I started wikipeeing the history of the pencil last night and I couldn't stop.

We also thought a second usage of the verb wikipee would be to create or ad to an entry on wikipedia.

Example: Someone wikipeed on Rick Johnson, professional musician. There was some discussion as to whether it was appropriate to wikipee on him. Some in the community feared that his entry was trivia. I haven't wikipeed him lately to see if the entry still exists. Must put that on my do to list for tomorrow.

Great moments in legal speak

"our long-standing company policy does not allow us to accept or consider creative ideas, suggestions, or materials "

So there.

I know, I know, they mean unsolicited creativity. Which is just as good a message: Only give us the creative things that we ask you for.

"A loaf of bread, a stick of butter, and a container of milk"

Today, I left the house twice. Once to do the wash. 'twas a madhouse at the Space Age Laundromat today and I was in everyone's way the whole time. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Exasperating.

The second time was to pick up a book that I ordered from the Community Bookstore and to buy toilet paper. Picking up the book, "Globalization and Its Discontents" was the easy part. It was so easy in fact that I bought a second book. On the way back I could not remember what else it was that I needed to get. I walked into a grocer and bought a nectarine. Half a block later I walked into a nother and bought a loaf of bread and some milk. And finally at the next place I bought toilet paper and a bottle of orangina. It occurred to me on the walk back how lucky it was that every street block in my Nabe seems to have at least one little deli or grocery. Lucky for the absent minded impulse shopper.

After all of that activity I needed a nap and now I can't sleep. For inexplicable reasons today I feel a bit like myself again. Haven't felt like myself since May. I'll have to ruminate on why that is.



Yesterday, I puttered around the house savoring the feeling of just being there. I have recently become obessessed with the TED conference. Crack for an idea junkie, really.

Grandma verified statistics - This talk in particular which you must see in video is pretty fucking astounding.

I went to a benefit show called After the Jump Fest. There was a free daytime portion and a nighttime portion. I went to the free part. Don't worry, I was not a total freeloader, I bought raffle tickets. The two bands that I liked best played the small stage in the back. It was small crowded and not air conditioned but fun. Apache Beat and Goes Cube. Does that make me a rock dinosaur?

A bunch of music bloggers got together and organized this thing. The organization benefited is called DonorsChoose.org. Essentially it is a place where public school teachers can post proposals for what they would like to do and ask for donations to assist them.

They range from simple:"Where Did All the Pencils Go?" ($60)

To something like: "Cooking Across the Curriculum — Cook books, bowls, mixers, and a mini-refrigerator are sought by a 3rd grade teacher who writes: Cooking incorporates all the curriculum areas in an engaging and memorable way. In science we experience how matter changes as we watch batter bake into a cake. In social studies we follow the path of an apple from a tree to our table in the form of a pie. In math we add fractions and follow directions in sequence. In reading, stories come alive as we cook the very food we just read about. Our writing and art reflect vivid personal experiences after participating in a cooperative cooking project ($1,100).

The organizers chose a music education project in the South Bronx. Here here.

And I got to chat on the phone with the RM. She is getting ready the wrap up her Montana summer and prepare to fly over to Scotland for grad school. Mega cool. I am so psyched for her.


Seeing "Xanadu" was not as delightful as I had anticipated. In part because a lot has happened in my life and the world since 1980 and also in part because I drunkenly sat in the wrong theater and sat through reviews and opening credits for the wrong midnight movie. So I missed the big production dance number at the beginning to the song "I'm Alive." So the spell was cast incomplete for me. I find it funny that back then I loved the old timey stuff and this time I was most moved by the sappy love songs. Probably because I am a sap. And surprised to see how fluid and sassy a tap dancer Olivia NJ was. She and Gene Kelly did a really nice sequence together. Gene Kelly was one of my earliest crushes. Along with William Holden.

But that evening had other moments to recommend it.

Propagate some positive vibes today kids. NSTL is getting surgery today. A neck dissection and we want it to go off without a hitch.

with the bath water

"It's like riding a biker." -Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

I relived a part of my geek past today. I ftp'd files today using the old school unix function. No gui's for this girl today. Just technodinosaurs in the hizouse today. Woo Hoo!


"Just a slob like one of us" - Joan Osborne

Walking to work on Friday I passed a man who said, "God talks to you all the time." I don't know if he was speaking to me, himself, or someone else. He didn't seem to have a cell phone or bluetooth with him. But there it is. Which somehow reminds me of the words from Walt Whitman:

"I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever."

Comforting if you believe that sort of thing.



Drinking on Mars

Smoked my second cigarette. I have taken a puff here or there. But yesterday for only the second time in my life I smoked a whole cigarette. I know not why. It was awful. I don't know how you smokers do it. The South and I were wandering about killing time before I went to see Xanadu-u-u. (The South politely declined to accompany me to that.) On the way to some bar or another we walked by this graffiti covered soon to be condemned looking place and peered through the door. We were backing away when an effusive young Albanian man gave us cigarettes and invited us to come in and hang out insisting that the Mars Bar is great. I smoked the cigarette he offered b/c I didn't want to be rude. It's dark crowded and beyond being a dive it was completely bombed out. Covered in graffiti and strange little pieces of art. But I kinda liked it. It brought back the memory of the Barclay house and the Myrtle Morgue and the Spazzatorium Galleria. And the regulars knew each other pretty well giving this dark chaotic scary place a strangely friendly feeling. The beers however were not cheap.

1am count up

1.
Remember the boys in school who would give you a back rub that would turn into serious massage and when you seemed to be really relaxing they tried to transition into something - else? Someone reminded me of that whole strategy today. How could I forget.


2.
"How can our love succeed, a miracle is what we need. And so I appeal to yo-o-o-ou"
-Olivia Newton John

I am going to see the movie Xanadu at a midnight showing this weekend. A time machine taking me back to 1980. I am so psyched.


3.
I went to see "Stardust." A Fairy Tale so cute. There is much more to say on the subject but let us start there.


4.
I have had a few vegan meals this week. Fancy ones at that. Not bad. Not bad. I am surprised to feel very full when done eating. But for some strange reason, I am left feeling very full but craving cheese.

5.
Looked up CK's free will astrology horoscope and ran across this "Sacred Advertisement"

"Charles Darwin said the "survival of the fittest" is a central factor in the process of evolution. What exactly did he mean by that? He makes it clear in his book, The Origin of Species: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

The quote of a quote is from Rob Brezsny. The bolding is mine, thank you very much.


6.
On my walk home tonight I kept hearing the Beatles song "Blackbird."

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive."

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free."

I am waiting for a moment. Sometimes I fear that it came a went without me.
Sometimes I wonder what I will be when it arrives.


7.
BRB

Funny how things change

This 1994 interview with Dick Cheney is a bit of a shocker to me.

Scrapbooking the tour

I looked up today and realized that this summer went by really quickly, as if it had never happened at all.

This summer, life had two modes - touring and not touring.
Which is odd considering that I only spent about 19 days existing in any kind of touring capacity this summer.

But there was the time spent prepping for touring. The time spent recovering from touring and the all things that I told myself I would put off until after I was done touring. Many of which I have conveniently forgotten.


I did not take video, audio or pictures on either tour. Or as E recently said, the pictures that I took from tour give a very oblique impression of what happened.

Taking in my performance through media I am definitely not as I imagined myself to be. For better or worse. I am a good deal dorkier.

We looked like this.

In motion we looked like this.

In interview and live rebroadcast, the band comes off like this.
I was the silent Beatle and then little miss shouts a lot.

If you saw me live I might have pushed my fist into your face or shoved you or crawled under your table or pretended to blow my nose on your shirt sleeve. I might have.



The East and West Coast tours were so different. Obviously in where we went and who we played with. They were also different in what I carried with me into the tour.

Around the time of the East Coast tour I was nursing psychic wounds - heartache, self-doubt, anger, frustration and disappointment. I couldn't let any of it go and it colored the whole experience on that coast. A lot of it was about the heartache.

And on the West Coast I had the self-doubt and the anger and the frustration but less heartache and a bit less disappointment.

I had recently had a conversation with a friend who was very concerned with turning 37. Which made me realize that I am going to turn 37 too and that in the Great Game of Life it may very well be too late for me to catch up to my peers.

And rather than despair I figure that I might as well stop worrying about it and get on with doing whatever I'm doing right now.

Added to that I was bathed in the reflected glow of DD having met this really awesome girl. It was so great to be around someone who was unabashedly googly about who he was with. Kinda restored my faith in wuv. They might not be writing songs of love for me. But I'm really glad they are being written.


On my return I am still using my outside voice indoors, speaking scatologically, swearing like a sailor, and feeling more than a little unruly - lingering traces like the scent on the sheets after he leaves.

Don't fence me in

Well Friends, last time I was touring the East Coast and this time I am touring the West Coast with the Mystechs. If you feel like it, come on out and say howdy, pardner.


8/3/07
Starry Night
Freedom & Central
Provo, UT 84601
8pm

8/4/07 sunny
Club Underground
555 E. 4th St. B
Reno NV 89512
9:30p 21+

8/5/07
Club Fred
1426 N. Van Ness Ave.
Fresno, CA 93728
8pm 21+

8/6/07
The Jumping Turtle
1660 Capalina Rd
San Marcos, CA 92069
8pm

8/7/07
Safari Sam's
5214 W. Sunset blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90027
8pm

8/8/07
Vega's Sports Bar
910 2nd st.
Sacramento, CA 95814
7pm

8/9/07
Diablo's Downtown Lounge
959 Pearl St.
Eugene, OR 97401
10p

8/10/07
Caterina
905 N. Washington
Spokane, WA 99201
9pm

8/11/07
Myrtle Morgue
210 Myrtle St.
Boise, ID 83702
9pm


www.mystechs.com
www.myspace.com/mystechs

there's more pretty girls (and boys) than one

I think I might have discussed this with you before. I've certainly discussed this with BBFK before. I bring it up again because I was at the bookstore and ran across a book called "Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market and Just About Everything Else," by Amir D. Aczel. I had read it a few years ago. It's sort of a street level mediation on probability.

He has one small chapter in which he claims that probability can be brought to bear on the matter of finding Mr. / Ms. Right.

"How do we know when to stop looking and choose?" Aczel asks.

The answer that he says the mathematicians have come to is: "You will maximize your probability of finding the best spouse if you date about 37% of the available candidates in your life and then choose to stay with the next candidate who is better than all previous ones."

He claims that this is true in looking for the right house, or job or puppy too.

I am sitting here trying to remember who all I have dated. My memory is proving to be embarassingly weak. I have been alive for 36 years. I had a "boyfriend" in kindergarden and then nothing until about my senior year of high school.

Since the age of 17 I can recall going on dates with about 33 (?) people.
Some for the blink of an eye - some for over a year. It averages to about 1.7 people a year. Let say I live another 54 years. At that rate I might go on dates with about 91.8 more people. Making a total over my lifetime of 124.8 people.

37% would be about 46.17 more first dates.

So maybe 13.17 first dates from now (at my going rate that translates to about 7.75 years from now) when I am 43.75, I am going to need to start looking for the person I like better than the 46.17 that went before and ask that person to marry me.

Hopefully, that person will either be nearing their 37% point or foolish enough to allow themself to be overwhelmed by the force of my certainty that we are meant to be. Up to now this has not been the case. And hopefully this person will be interested in the option of adopting kids.

Having done these rough calculations it occurs to me that I have probably been on more first dates than I have listed here. And as I get older and stranger and wrinklier and saggier I might not manage to maintain my grueling schedule of 1.7 first dates a year. Maybe I am at 37% already or way past it.

Then again, it's good to take on the attitude that you don't want to settle. That what you want is to be with someone really neato, someone you like better than all the other people that you have been with up to this point. This would not be a terrible thing. It might even be a good rule of thumb to work with. For instance, when working your way past a bad break up.

On my to do list

Long long ago in my early 20's I dated a young poet scientist medical student. After being together for a while he turned to me after I said something disparaging about myself and said, "You really need to stop beating yourself up like this. There are any number of people out there who are eager to do that job for you." He was so right.

To beat yourself up does not prevent others from beating up on you too. You end up twice bruised and more beaten down than you have to be. Because there are plenty of people out there who are more than happy to make you feel bad to make themselves feel better.

You need that energy you have expended putting yourself down. You need that energy to take care of yourself and protect yourself in dealing with these people. You need that energy to be alert to the times that you are in those situations and to get yourself out.

Taxi Theories

The cab driver said to me, "There are two things that cost in a cab ride: Time and distance. You cannot change much about the distance that you travel. But you can do something about the time it takes to get there."

He argued that it is important to take traffic and construction into account during your cab ride.

"Each red light in Manhattan lasts about 52 seconds - about a minute. The difference between taking four stoplights and taking eight of them is about 40 cents."

His theory was that going that four blocks out of your way might actually save you time and money if it allows you to avoid a particularly difficult intersection or part of town because being stuck in gridlock for 30 minutes will cost you more in the end.

Time and Distance
Time and Money
Time and Memory

This was the most insightful cab ride of my life. I tipped the guy 30%. I should have tipped more.

while whiling away the time

Lunch
After my great train debacle I met up the next day with an interesting fella for lunch. He is, perhaps, too interesting for me. A thought which was confirmed by an email fron him saying how nice it was to catch up with "an old friend." Right there, I was slammed right into the Friend Zone. We move onward.


Ratatoullie
After this lively lunch I met up with CKE and we went to see the movie Ratatoullie. Which is adorable and good fun. Truth be told my anti-rat prejudices were not overcome by this movie. I thought the little chef was adorable but I gotta say that the rat colony cooking scenes made me feel a little queasy. That being said I loved the movie - it had a lot of heart. Plus the character Collette has the haircut that I was trying to get. (didn't quite work out, and I haven't colored it purple yet.)

The movie does have within it a really beautiful little essay:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. "
-Anton Ego

"In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
-Anton Ego


Space Age Laundromat
I found a new Laudromat with a super grumpy proprietor and the most high tech and modern washing machines that I have encountered and right here in my Nabe. I think there is a secret button sequence on them that will turn back time in twenty minute intervals.


Idiocracy
I rented the movie and it had some pretty funny moments. The evolution of the Starbucks business plan was pretty funny. Still, I am kinda pissed that in the future everyone is colossally dumb and they are for the most part fat and brownskinned with long hair. Where are the dumb yellow people? And where are the dumb skinny people? And the dumb pale skinned people? And the dumb people with glasses and the dumb people with short hair? I feel somehow slighted by the future.


Picking up old habits
On Sunday I revisited to one of my favorite pastimes. Knitting while watching public affairs programming on PBS. I bought a bunch of yarn and some knitting needles at a stoop sale down the block a few months ago and on Sunday decided to start knitting a really basic sweater. Ended up knitting until 3am while watching several documentaries. One on corruption in the Dade County government. The government was raising all kind of money to build affordable housing in Miami. Money that ended up lining the pockets of shady shady officials, consultants, and contractors. Interestingly, there is finally some afforable housing being built in the area but it is not being built with government money nor is it being done by the private sector. It is being built by Habitat for Humanity.

Also saw a documentary on the effects of the prison industrial complex on a small rural town called Susanville. The documentary makers were trying to make some kind of a connection between the coming of the jails and the decline of the local economy but it didn't seem like they made their case all that well. After all, there are any number of rural towns that are also in economic dire straits with the Walmarts rolling in, the fast food joints providing the only new jobs, and the mill and factory work being lost to automation and outsourcing.

The argument that they can make is that having a prison is not the answer to a community's economic troubles. Which kinda makes sense. Banks hold the things that people value and hopefully appreciate in value. Schools hold kids and hopefully educate them and provide the skills that allow them to be productive. Jails are places where we hold people that are bad. They cost and do not produce. Well, perhaps they produce safety by preventing dangerous people from hurting others. But I think that is an indirect argument to be made.

The toughest stories was about a guy who was sent to jail for 15 months for stealing a can of tuna, a loaf of bread, and some mac and cheese to try and feed his wife and two kids. He had been laid off from his job and they were driving across country so that he could interview for a job. They had money for gas for the trip and nothing else. Like Jean Valjean in Les Mis or something. The story of this family is wrenching starting from his wife and kids waiting for him to get out, to the time spent in Susanville struggling in a economically barren place to get by, keep the family together and make rent while he served out his parole. At one point he has no work, they can't make rent, and the landlady sends a five day eviction notice. Watching his wife break down frightened and at her wits end was so hard. It made me angry to see it on film. Angry that it was happening and a little angry that someone was rolling tape and not putting down the camera and trying to help this woman and give her comfort. I suppose that is the struggle of journalism.

There were so many painful realities and hard choices playing out in people's lives in this movie. Points at which what was happening just made my heart sink.

Also saw most of a documentary about the plan to build a new capital city in Ras al-Khaimah. They were talking about how the region has Free Trade zones in which there are no taxes for businesses and a significant part of the workforce is South Asian. I really know nothing about this area but I do wonder sitting here right now, what a nation gets out of having a Free Trade zone. While I suppose it would create jobs and bring technical expertise into your country it seems risky to me. How does a nation provide services and protection, create and maintain infrastructure, and educate and care for their people without taxes? I suppose there are Libertarians and Free Market gurus out there ready and willing to answer this question for me. "Exactly the point," they might shout with glee.

Missunderstanding
While dancing with a fella at Splash he said, "you are very good at the game."

*?*

I don't even know what he means by that. If he means the dating game he is woefully mistaken or worse even than me.

Ridiculous

I just got home about 3am. I have been trying to get home since midnight.

Fucking trains. Every one that I took was using some weird alternate route. I transferred 6 times to get home. My hero was the MTA conductor on the A train taking an alternate route over a stretch of the F line. Were it not for him I would have sat at that god foresaken, or should I say F forsaken stop all weekend.

This after going to a super popular trendy joint for a friend's 23rd birthday. Reservation for a party of 15. The restaurant refuses to seat a party unless everyone is there. An hour after the reservation time eight of us were there. One had to leave before the waiter came to the table. And then five more people showed up. Twelve people were crammed around two tables that barely seat 4 a piece.

On the plus side the place was relatively inexpensive - and everyone chipped in well enough that we covered the tab with no disputes and no one feeling sore about paying in too much. A rarity with groups of more than 5 who don't all know each other really well. This party somehow managed to avoid the free rider problem. Which is pretty amazing and says a lot for my friend and the kinds of people that she is friends with.

If you put tofu in your curry I think it would help to season and lightly sautee the cubes first or at least steep them in the curry sauce. Bleah.

Y'know, I can't really tell you what I have done lately that was as fun as blogging or reading the new Harry Potter book.

Seems like I do all kinds of stuff all the time but it's quantity not quality. Gotta work out how to flip that.

count you out like a mathematician

LOL. Okay Sunjunkie, the blogs resume.

Neato energy news:

Sun, sun, sun, here we come
You may or may not know that the Gordon Research Conferences are a very prestigious series of science conferences that happen year 'round on a variety of important and hot topics. Poking around their website today I found out today that part of the electricity they use is solar! which is totally groovy.

I'd like to see the Rhode Island state government setup solar panels on all of their buildings and not just help others get the funding to do it. And have other government buildings and universities and other such entities follow suit.


Black Google
This guy, Mark, wrote a post calculating the energy savings that might result if Google changed the color of the background of their page from White to Black. He did a follow up interview on the subject as well.

This post has lead to a creation of: Blackle - the black background google.


Other News:

-I got a drastic haircut.
-I bought an ipod - my old one died on tour.
-I saw the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane dance company in Prospect Park and was bascially gasping in amazement. There is one dancer in his company is particular who is sooooo incredible.
-I read the new Harry Potter book in the span of about 19 hours. Very satisfying read. Expelliarmus!
-I applied for what I have always imagined to be my dream job. I crashed and burned during the test assignment in the second round. Very bad for morale. I am looking for a new dream job
-New York and I are going through a rough patch. The Honeymoon is over. I find myself turning to her and saying, "Geez, why do you have to make everything so difficult? Is all of this really necessary?" I know the answer. The city's reply is, "This is me. This is how I roll. Take me and love me or leave me. There is no in between."

-My new favorite song is "Konichiwa Bitches" by Robyn.

"I'm so very hot that when I rob your mansion
You ain't call the cops, you call the firestation" -Robyn

Confession of a Frivolous Beauty Dupe

"Now you bangs are cut. Your hair is curled. But still the world is cruel."
-Frankie Avalon

I suspect that it says a lot about me that the character in Grease who I most identified with as a kid was Frenchie and probably not good things.

There's so much noise in the ether. Magazines, radio, gossip, news, "news," movies, television, internet, ....

And one message that always seems to filter through is that life is better if you are beautiful. Also if you are rich. Also if you are thin. Also if you are successful. Also if you are famous. Also if you are young.

Who knows. It's probably true.

But back to beautiful. At various points in my life I look in the mirror after having had my heart stomped on and decide that what I need is to make the best of what I have and surrender to the discipline of beauty.

I don't read the women's magazines anymore which, admittedly, has made me a much happier person. While on tour I picked one up at C M S & J's house in Athens, GA and read it. It was only after I picked through the whole thing that I noticed that it was an issue from 2004. Nothing much has changed in the world of girl in the interim. According to Mademoiselle, I still need to buy new clothes, new shoes, and new shades of eyeshadow and lipstick. I still get a haircut, lose weight, exfolliate, and find ten easy ways to dress up daytime look for nighttime.

Yeah. Beauty.

As Dolly Parton's character says in Steel Magnolias and many a beauty acolyte as well, "There's no such thing as natural beauty."

So in the times in my life when I decide that I need meditate on the discipline of beauty I turn to C who makes a serious study of this stuff.

And then I spend too much money on little bottles and jars of stuff that I never use and eventually throw away.

It has happened again. I spent a little too much time at Sephora and Aveda and Target and CVS and Haven and spent way too much money on stuff.

Eyebrow stencils
Hydrating serum - to hydrate
Vitamin C serum - to encourage the growth of collagen and help with sun damage.
A glycolic acid lotion - to exfolliate and reduce the size of my pores. It tingles.
A moisturizer for sensitive skin
An eye cream - Aveda has a really nice one.
A foamy cleanser - delightful
A deep conditioner - miraculous
A pricey sunscreen in a cute bottle - This purchase was a mistake. It makes me break out.

I will not bore you with the pricey price tags involved. I will just say that for the next few weeks I am going to flirt with botulism and pack a lunch to bring to work. This will not cover the costs of what I have purchased. It will merely serve to make me feel slightly less guilty about it.

Now I am trying to create a routine in which I smear all of this crap on my face a few times a day.

All of this brings to mind the beauty company Philosophy. They make a product called "Hope in a bottle." Which is pretty clever.

I understand that these products will not make me look younger, nor will they make me more beautiful, nor will they help me find love or success or happiness or enlightenment. I have essentially purchased hope in many different bottles with many different labels. I have sublimated a desire for one set of things through the purchase of things that would theoretically make me look like me with a clearer and shinier face.

But hey, it's keeps me off the streets and off the sauce. ;)

The most I hope for in this scenario is to use every product to the last drop. To do that and then take a break before my next go around.

The other thing that I hope for is time spent kindly looking at myself in the mirror. That would be nice.

Maybe Philosophy will come out with a product called "Bliss in a bottle." Maybe a bath oil or something. That would sell like hotcakes.

I can't help but wonder why the ether doesn't send out more messages like: "Say Please and Thank you." "Wash your hands." "Wear Sunscreen." "Cover you mouth when you cough and sneeze." "Smile." "Tell someone that you love them." "Take more walks." "Have more picnics." "Be clear about what you want and ask for it."

They are things that don't get much media play. They are the kind of things that we hear from our mothers and fathers. And cheesy as it sounds, doing these things will probably make your life better.

Growing accustomed to the unthinkable

I passed a poster in the subway station for the sequel to the movie Hostel. Someone had written across it in black marker: "Stop Torture."

And I thought, "Yes. Stop Torture."

There are any number of arguments one can make about fiction and fantasy and art and about how it's "just a movie," and I should just lighten up.

Still, I wonder at how our concept of entertainment has become so strange and extreme, so twisted? Don't you?

This is the part of the show where I start to sound like the little old lady that I am.

Torture is not entertainment. Torture is evil.

Stop Torture.

www.amnesty.org

so true

"if there's one thing i believe with all my heart, it's that the quality of work is completely independent of filthy lucre. they have nothing to do with one another, and most of the best work in the world has no monetary value at all."
-Domystic

Free on Friday

The whole concept of summer Fridays is a curious one. For two months of the summer if I come into work 15 minutes earlier and stay 30 minutes later, I get to take Friday off every two weeks.

And this being my very first one ever, I wholeheartedly proclaim summer Fridays to be awesome. I miss this opened ended time in which I can get up or got back to sleep. Read a book or take a walk. The kind of day where anything might happen. I could do anything. And really, even if I do nothing it's the best day ever.

Summer Fridays are a little piece of HR genius.

too funny

This site was brought to me today by a site called thoof via Daily Candy.

They were highlighting this cartoon.

In clicking around I ran across
this one. The bottom panel has me laughing out loud.

The good life

"What is best in life? To crush your enemies. To see them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their women ...."

-Conan the Barbarian

Baselines

My college roommate freshman year liked to give blood and then get drunk.
It's not recommended. She liked it because giving blood lowered her baseline. Her tolerance was lower and she could get really drunk really quickly.

Along the same lines I am sooo happy today. On my return it would seem that my life baselines have been lowered. I am euphorically ecstatically giddy. Because, today, I am not in a cramped moving vehicle, I am not sitting for hours twisted like a pretzel, I can stop what I am doing and go to the bathroom anytime I want, I got 8 hours of sleep last night in a bed and I plan to get a bunch more sleep tonight.

Indeed, as Ace of Base might say, "It's a beautiful life."

back to life, back to reality

The previous post was number 666. And coincidentally, on tour I sang a Mystechs song called "Sweet 666Teen."

It's hard to know where to start and what to say. It's hard to know what not to say too. The innocent and the wicked each clamor for the protection of silence. ; )

I was not as prepared this time. My performances were uneven. There were moments where I disappointed myself but in turn there were also times when I surprised myself and in a good way. There is more touring to come in August and I will be more prepared by then. Perhaps with better preparation there will be more space created for the unexpected.

Towards then end of the tour I skipped a date and went to a wedding. There is much to say about this as well. And again hard to know what to say. It was really strange to be back in Champing-Urbanana. A stroll down ten years of living. Ten years in which a lot happened. My mind was brought to ponder my most disasterous love affair and surprisingly it was not from the year 2005. Go figure.

And I am sorry to report that the guy I had decided should be my future husband has a gorgeous really awesome girlfriend who he will marry. Ah well. As RJ might say to that with a shrug ... "Them's the breaks."

But mostly and most importantly, it was really wonderful to be in the presence again of good friends. To see the loving community of people with whom I was lucky enough to spend time when I lived and loved in Urbanana.



I rolled into the office today to find 39 unread work emails waiting for me and several others to be attended to. My head's pretty fragmented today. I remembered to pack office friendly clothing but I forgot to pack nice shoes and I forgot my work ID and access card. So I can't leave my desk to go pee, b/c I will have no way to get back in.

And under my desk I have lace up leather boots and sweat drenched clothes that attest to what just happened.

Warning: this message may self destruct over the next few days.

*kiss*

On the Road Again

I'm gonna be on tour with the Mystechs starting tomorrow.

*wheeee*

For the next 12 days I'll be here or on the way here on driving away from here:

6/20 Chicago, IL
6/21 Toledo, OH
6/22 Buffalo, NY
6/23 Stratford, CT
6/24 Trenton, NJ
6/25 New York, NY
6/26 Takoma Park, MD
6/27 Greenville, NC
6/28 Spartanburg, SC
6/29 Marietta, GA
6/30 Murfreesboro, TN
(Well, I won't be there ... long story ... just means the show will kick your ass that much harder!)
7/1 Cincinnati, OH

It's a metal album. I will be running around in high (not tall) boots. There will be guitar solos. And we are touring with the Rick Johnson Rock and Roll Machine (who can jump very high and has cool glasses)
Come out and see the show! Buy me drinks! Get a hug!

http://www.myspace.com/mystechs

If My Heart Could Beat It Would Break My Chest

These are random offerings:

This saleman sings opera.

These links are ganked from Ze Frank: one, two, three

JW sent me this cartoon about big dreams.


Last Friday I went to a Buffy Sing Along. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a television show that actually translates pretty well to the big screen. And certain emotions and implications writ large on the big screen resonate in a way that clicks differently than on the telly.

*spoiler*

When Buffy sings her big number at the end and you find out that she was in heaven before her friends decided to bring her back to life, the pain of that experience comes across on the big screen in such an exquisite way. It's devastating. Even when you are sitting there in a theater surrounded by hardcore Buffy fans singing their guts out and playing kazoos.

Dance a littler closer to me

People ask me what I am looking for in a man - some kind of checklist.

Long, long ago I wanted to be with someone who was smart, cute, and a really good dancer. When it was clear that the really good dancer part would be hard ... I revamped the list. In fact every time I date someone I find that I revamp the list based on what I learn about him or what I learn about me while being with him.

There's so much revamping that has happened over time that I no longer really have a list. I mean, I suppose it's there somewhere, but I find a mystery to the chemistry between people that serves to undermine the use of lists.

I'm hoping that I'll know it when I see it. I'm hoping that is a matter of kissing enough frogs. I'm hoping that it is a matter of time and not a matter of luck.

FS is getting married in two weeks and this is what she says about her fiance:

"turns out that I actually really just enjoy his company more than most people's"

That sounds like a great reason to be with someone.

The Wash Barrier

I did five loads of laundry today. Yesterday, I did two. I can only hope that this means that I am caught up, laundry wise. Although, I have a feeling that there is a sick here and a washcloth other there, each disappointed to have missed out on the fun. The fact that I have so much to launder is remarkable. I have no idea where it all came from. Yesterday, it was clothes. Today, it was linens, blankets, comforter, and sleeping bag.

And I vaccuumed. Yay! Someone throw me a parade.

As I trucked back and forth (and back and forth) to the laundromat I pondered the fact that many many people in greater NYC area pay other people to wash, dry, and fold their laundry for them. In fact, all four of the laundromats that I have used in the Nabe, offer laundry service.

It's tempting. It would be convenient. No lugging your clothes several blocks on foot. I put mine into a wheeled piece of luggage and shoulder bag. It always looks as if I am leaving New York for good when it's time to do my laundry.

With laundry service there would be no waiting around for your clothes to wash and dry. No need to wait for a free a washer or dryer. Dryers are almost always at a premium. No scrounging for quarters. No odd conversations with odd people.

Pay by the pound, drop off your clothes, pick them up the next day. Almost as good as living at home again.

You could spend that time doing something meaningful like write a symphony or read to the blind.

But I can't bring myself to do it. Seems strange to ask another person to wash my dirty drawers. Personal responsibility - I dirtied them, shouldn't I be cleaning them?

Maid service is another matter altogether ... if I could afford it, I would totally go for that. =)

via The South , Ok Go and the Youtube Universe

The South told me that it was the greatest music video ever. And after watching it I would have to say that the OK Go video for the song: "Here it goes again" is pretty damn delightful. And if you haven't seen it yet, allow me to offer you this link.

In additional hilarity someone created this video response.

This is one video for which I would really like to the special DVD featurette.

What I suspect after working 7 months as an assistant

The only assistants that are having any fun are magician's assistants.

eating heart

I got it into my head that I wanted to eat heart. Not my own or the heart of anyone I know but heart nonetheless. I settled on the hearts of chickens. At the local grocer you can buy a pound of chicken hearts for $1.89. So I did that and went online to find me a recipe. Chicken hearts are not the most popular of meats to cook, so there weren't that many recipes to choose from. I did find a stir fry recipe.

So, chicken hearts look a bit like liver. They also look vaguely like a section of a part of the male anatomy. And so staring down at them in the wok as you brown them is weird. It's not just the shape, but as they are "browned" they turn a familiar color as well. A color that this picture doesn't reflect.



Kind of like a scene from "The Cook, the Thief His Wife and Her Lover," a movie that I saw while in college. It was so disturbing that I watched most of it through my fingers and had trouble sleeping for many days after.

The chicken hearts still have some blood in them which will run out as you cook them and make a kind of blood gravy that smells like chicken. It makes it hard to determine if they are getting successfully browned. They looked cooked but there's still blood seeping out.

I stir fried them with onions, garlic, and mushrooms and served them over brown rice. They tasted vaguely, ever so vaguely, like liver and had this curious chewy texture. Which I guess would happen with a muscle like the heart.

I am trying to decide what is missing from this dish for me and whether I want to cook heart again. Off the top of my head, I think it needs a little sweet, maybe a little fruit. Maybe. Beside that I am not sure. Maybe hearts are to be held and not to be eaten.

stencil madonna

Is it street art or vandalism?

Green tubs roll on overhead tracks to the checkout counter

Have you ever been to B&H Photo Video?
I was there for the first time today. The battery for my camera died and I have been trying to get to the shop to buy a replacement since a little after Valentine's Day.

After many evenings of leaving work and rushing to the store only to find it closed (they close at 7pm), I made a point of going over on my lunch hour. The place is magical. It's an exercise in guided chaos and traffic control. Wow.

The folks that work went to great lengths to find me a less expensive alternative to the battery that I was trying to replace. The man behind the counter knew what camera I had just from my description of it, "I know that camera well," he said. And in the end they probably saved me over $30 dollars. When does that happen?

One of the young men working on the main floor even wanted to ask me on a date. (!)

I am no camera buff but if I was (or if ever I become one) this is probably the place where I would get my gear fix.

quotable enviable life strategies

“You been thinkin’ I’ve been bored. Self indulgent, self destroyed.
I’ve been busy, Baby, I keep busy. Quittin’ every job in New York City”.

-Tim Fite

things swallowed whole

There was a knot in my throat from the moment I woke up.
And although I could swallow and I could breathe and speak, it felt like I was choking.

What if it was due to a state of mind?

I walked up and down the corridor. Which didn't help.
I stepped outside. Also didn't help.
I walked. Also didn't help.
I listened to my favorite songs. Also didn't help.
I spoke with friends. Which helped a little.

I sat under my desk, pulled in the chair, and listened to Bjork.

Which didn't actually help. But I am thinking of putting a lava lamp, beaded curtain and a bean bag chair down there.

I went to yoga and that helped. During the practice and for an hour or two afterwards I could breathe.

But now I feel a little constricted again.


Does that ever happen to you?

I am wondering if it's not a state of mind but rather a state of body. Maybe I ate something disagreeable today and I have heartburn or acid reflux. The roast beast sandwich was the wrong choice. Or perhaps there were peanuts or chickpeas hidden in my snacks or lunch today. I don't know.



Clearly, I am reacting to something.
Clearly, I need to get something out of my system.

The question is what?

constant companion

If the state of my bedroom is any indication you would think that Chaos is the Goddess who watches over me. My patron, my constant companion making sure to lend a hand in every endeavor that I undertake.

On one hand, it's nice to know that I don't walk through this life alone.

On the other, it makes it really hard to work.

She watches me knowing that my inherent chaotic nature will manifest itself despite my ever effort to the contrary. And in these oh so frequent situations, I hear her laughing and feel her pointing. Especially in situations that are no laughing matter at least to those who write my checks.

Alas.

"This guy is so accidentally cool!"

Just saw "Happy Feet." Very cute.

Penguins have such short stubby legs, I would never imagine them tap dancing. (Or singing for that matter.) The sight of them animated and dancing up a storm is hilarious.

And the Amigos are the best. Without them this movie would have been too cheesey by far. With them the mix balances out much more nicely.

Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation is the movie by Richard Linklater based on the book by Eric Shlosser about how nasty, evil and corrosive Fast food is to our lives, our health, our economy, and our communities.

The movie follows the storylines of people who are in or affected by the fast food industry.

It has that documentary/slice of life style reminiscent of Robert Altman's "Short Cuts." You can't help but feel like something is on the verge of happening - something big and perhaps very tragic - that these worlds will collide . Of course they don't. In the way that they are interconnected there is no reason to suppose that they would except through some artificial dramatic device inserted specifically for that purpose. No in this movie each story plays out in its own way and from the very short time that we spend with these characters, we get a sense for how nasty, damaging, and corrosive Fast food is to our lives, our health, our economy, and our communities.

The footage at the end of cows getting slaughtered and processed is really disturbing. The working conditions at the meat packing plant as depicted in the movie are also really disturbing.

Meatpacking is incredibly dangerous work yet pays 24% less than an average factory job in America. Those in charge do what they can to keep it that way. Increases in wages, better work conditions would effect their profit margins. We, Americans, spend $134 billion a year on fast food. It's big business. Really big business.

when I'm stuck with a day that's gray and gloomy

I'm not gonna lie. I've been kind of blue.

Not that you care. Not that anyone cares. Not that you should. My blues are the trivial stupid kind. The mostly self-invented kind. The I am going to die alone in a rickety old house abandoned and forgotten by even my 20 cats kind of blue. Ok, you have a point - more like the die alone in a rickety old house an abandoned skeleton after my 20 cats make a meal of me.

Admittedly my blues are kind of periwinkle in color. Especially compared to very sad and painful news happening to people I know and care about all around me. But I would say that they do not have the blues. They have actual pain and loss and grief and tragedy on their hands. Stuff that is several orders of magnitude beyond the blues.

And if you are going to tell me that I am being a moronic spoiled overly sensitive petty bourgeois fool I advise you to stop reading and take that superior mentally healthy shit back to your own damn blog and leave me alone. Right now. Here at Things to Do I am the only one who will be belittling my own feelings today.

Yeah. Kind of blue. Riding that downward spiral. Floating back up a little, sinking down and bobbing about.

This kind of blue is where I take time to sit under my desk and wallow. Where I want very much to mope and I spend a lot of time holding my head in my hands. And in the midst of this I realize that, in fact, I have grown a little. The people around me can't know how far I've come. This is not as blue or as bad as I have been in the past but I have not grown nearly as much as I thought I had. Which is a little disheartening.

Still I have gotten to work on time and gotten through the day mostly with my game face on. It slips sometimes but it's serviceable. The goal is to be functional and to not spread my gloom and misery like some kind of communicable disease - to hold myself back from raining on the parades of others even though misery does like a little company.

I wake in the morning and have almost entire songs written that I promptly forget on hitting the snooze bar. I am left with the afterglow of a rhyme scheme.

And in the midst of it I do have a conflicting and competing desire to not be mope-y

In an effort to get into a better mood you can exaggerate your misery to epic proportions to your friends complete with scenarios of high ridiculousness.

You can call friends that have problems bigger than yours and offer a sympathetic shoulder.

You can call friends that you know will not be sympathetic and force yourself to discuss other things with them.

You can write emails to everyone you know that you never send.

You can write blog entries that you never post.

You can write journal entries that get erased or will remain forever private.

You can face, accept, and embrace the utter ridiculousness of you, the reality of your true self in comparison to that cherished idealized version that you wish you were. Warts and all.

You can take yourself for a walk.

You can take yourself out to lunch.

You can walk into a room where they are playing a song you really like:

"Girl put your records on, play me your favorite song
You go ahead, let your hair down.
Sapphire and faded jeans, I hope you get your dream
You go ahead, let your hair down.

You're gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow"

-Corinne Baily Rae

You can wear a shirt that makes you feel skinny and busty, maybe even a little pretty.

You can wear shoes that make your strides feel longer and listen to the songs that make you feel stronger.

You can plan to get your haircut.

You can go to a lecture series and hear Alice Walker and Gloria Steinem and Wilma Mankiller rap about life. Inspirational women who have done some really unusual and extraordinary things with their lives.

You can allow your friends to take you to a gay bar where they play nothing but broadway showtunes and project the scenes onto big screen TV's.

You can get really drunk and belt out epically extreme and emotionally overblown totally out of proportion to real life cheesy songs like they are "the sound of your soul" complete with diva arm gestures and elaborate dance routines and ask yourself why in the hell you haven't seen "Wicked" yet? (But only if you are the sort who likes Showtunes.) While the gay man in your group, your cruise director for the evening, warns the other bar goers that despite what they might think, you are not a tranny, that you are a real live woman, like, with a vagina.

You can show up to work the next day more than a little sick.


Just sitting here bitching and moaning about this to you, I feel my blues drying up a bit more. I know that it is like the passing of a storm. And only a matter of time.

But to the matter of those I know in actually pain. I don't know why but I am recalling a poem by Louise Gluck. Make that Two Poems.

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

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

you who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.



Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring-

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.



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

LJL tells me that I am too hard on myself. Perhaps that is true. It does occur to me that my periwinkle blues might be fed by internal demons.

I agree with Alice Walker that it's okay to sit with your pain or your sadness. In fact, it's probably a good idea to do a little bit of sitting.

That being said - the key is to sit with your sadness and not beat yourself up about it to feel worse. Be where you are don't spiral yourself down further and further.

I am sorry that you suffer. It is horrible. It is not fair. It is wrong. There are no words.

In this time, be kind to yourself. It is terrible to suffer as consciousness buried underground. But you and I both know (small comfort though it might be) that at the end of your suffering, there is a door.

in the presence of that talented bastard

To make it up to me for not getting to see Arcade Fire, The South found me a show to see.

The RM, The Can, The South and I went to see That Talented Bastard Ben Gibbard when he came to town for a solo show. He was here with Johnathan Rice and David Bazan.

Johnathan Rice was okay. The last song he played was kind of brilliant actually. And he got us all to sing along about how We were all stuck out in the desert and we're gonna die - wipe that salt and sand from your blistering eyes. The rest of his set was so so.

David Bazan plays guitar with rock solid rhythm. His voice is curious but appealing and he sings songs with titles like "shit talk" or a song written to a music critic called "Selling Advertising." Suffice it to say that I am madly in love with him and so disappointed that he is married.

That Talented Bastard Ben Gibbard then took the stage and did his thing. It was pretty amazing. Mind you, I don't know that much of his oeuvre. I am one of the unwashed. I have the Postal Service album. It's a great record. I probably should put it on my list of great albums and the songs stand up to acousticization. But I don't know his solo work and I don't know that many (if any) Death Cab for Cutie songs. It was a pretty decent introduction. That Talented Bastard is a very articulate singer. The beauty of an articulate singer is that you don't have to know the song to hear the lyrics.

(Lyle Lovett is an articulate singer. MomVee is an articulate singer. Now that
I have - for the most part - stopped trying to channel R&B and soul divas, I aspire to be an articulate singer too.)

The words sung cleanly and clearly and with such melancholy. Every once in a while I would cover my mouth with my hand in surprise at a turn of phrase or an image. At other points I would gasp and squeeze some appendage belonging to the South in utter amazement. Talented Bastard

There was one letdown. He did a cover of "All Apologies" on the piano. He can barely play piano. It was just wrong. It was a crime against Nirvana. I'm not saying that a cover must be true to the original. I'm not saying that a cover must be expressed in the spirit of the original. But it was just so impossibly earnest - no edge. It was gross.

One misstep for a Talented Bastard. Only one.

At some point during the show my mind wandered ever so slightly to the documentary "We Jam Econo" about the Minutemen. There's this show that they played where the crowd spit on them. They were covered in spit and loogies. And they kept playing. The spit flew into their mouths when they were singing. And they kept playing. They broke strings. In the end D. Boone and Mike Watt were playing on maybe two strings a piece but they went right on through.

And sitting there in the Town Hall theater, I wondered what Ben Gibbard would do if that happened to him. Would he keep playing? I don't know. I think he might.

I'm pretty sure that The South - provided he had a little liquor in him would spit back and keep playing. I'm pretty sure that EH would as well.

Would I keep playing? I'd like to think that I would but probably not. I am more likely to run from the stage in tears.

Most of the time it doesn't happen but any night that you get up there it could.

Whether the house is full or empty - they might boo. They might spit and throw things at you. They might mock you or ignore you or they might turn around and leave you. They might come up and hug you or try to tear off your clothes or your face. They might tear the mic away from you and do their own thing.

You just don't know. On any given night, it could happen.

On this night it didn't. Such a Talented Bastard, New York wouldn't dare!

where does science fall in all of this?

"There are only two industries. This has always been true," [...] "There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment. The industry of things comes first. It keeps us alive. But making things is easy now that we have the Feed. This is not a very interesting business anymore.
"After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything. This is Madame Ping's business."

-Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age"

You may or may not agree with this proposition. But if you do agree with it, what happens when creating entertainment becomes easy as well?

late night overdue rental

I just saw "Mutual Appreciation." It's not my life but it's just so familiar.

I've been on dates with a couple of these guys recently.
Reminds me of one of my past boyfriends.

The awkwardness and the lostness. The drifty weird difficultness, the utter inability to communicate to articulate, to make contact, but having a hyper-awareness of the emotion, the intention, the desire sitting right under the surface. right under the surface, so close in proximity - yet completely remote.

No thanks, maybe next week

I was walking down the street thinking about my state of singleness. Recently I was sitting in a tavern called The Subway with The South, NDles, and TBW having beers in a booth in the back. NDles was talking about how back home in Toronto most of her friends were married. And TBW and The South agreed that this was the case for them as well. It's also the case for me.

She was talking about how it was a relief to be in a place where she didn't feel this crushing pressure to be married. And the South and TBW agreed with her on this point as well. With that a puzzle piece fell into place for me too.

It must be part of why I feel comfortable here. And then I started to wonder if it would make be feel too comfortable until it was too late for me and I would spend my whole life alone.

Certainly there are things that I miss. Snuggling, good company, playing house, that dizzy dancing feeling where you can't stop smiling, etc...

On the flip side - in the past when I have dated someone there's always something to cry about. And in this time that I've been single, there's have been almost no occasion to cry. A sad story or movie. A moving tale of suffering or generosity. But that's my reaction to others. In my own life there's been nothing. Nothing, really, to cry about for the past 8 or 9 months.

And it's so nice to not feel miserable or insecure or epic-ly operatically unhappy in relation to another person. There's a definite lack of nausea in my life right now.

It's also nice to do my own thing without the negotiations that come with being with another person. Negotiations that I inevitably lose. Because he (whoever he is at whatever age he's at) is way more set in his ways and inflexible than I am. It's nice to not expend excessive amounts of time in trying to understand and make myself be understood by that one person. To not expend all of that effort into trying to make someone happy into trying to figure how to translate love, into actions, reactions, gestures, or words that the other person will recognize, believe, and accept as love.

And I don't know whether this means that I have been in really unhealthy relationships or I don't go about this love thing in the right way or I have become cowardly or excessively gunshy.

Don't get me wrong, I miss what's great about being with someone. It would be fantaberiffic to get struck by lightning for the nth time. I just don't want to be made (or make myself) miserable right now. Not in the mood.