I Don't Do Singalongs

[disclaimer: took an ambien at 5am and I am now attemptitsadhing to proofread in this compromised state and it is hopeless not working nonensese sorry wanredya[tjishblog will not make smuh csensne]

i. Fireworks:

My window's open and I can hear the fireworks; they sound like gunshots every time. I don't understand fireworks. I guess I never have, though it was nice when I was little to have an excuse to lie on a blanket on the grass with all the other girls, laugh, ooooo and ahhh, stare at the sky, lick sno-cones that turned our tongues red then blue then white. It was good for photography. Sparklers in the dark, glo-sticks like the ones ravers use.

These days: independence, yeah. Not our country's independence. Our country is fucked, obvs. Even if I was into things like eating outdoors, other people, and daytime drinking, it'd feel a little sadistic to celebrate anything that G.W. promotes as he escorts our civilization into total moral/ethical anarchy. But like ... independence. The concept? It's my favorite one. I get really pissed when someone makes me give it up.

I have nothing to say right now but can't seem to stop typing. I think it's become a bad habit, like biting my nails. Yesterday I wrote--oh--new topic.

***

ii. typetypetpye:

Yesterday we wrote 40 pages of the teleplay. Afterwards I jumped into the air a little and then stretched and then was like "Wow." And Carly was like "Wow." And we were like. "Wow. Go Us."

In 2007, I have learned that you can write and write and write for hours. Then what do you have? A lot of words. Where do they go? My hard drive. The internet.

Remember when there was no internet? I don't.

Whatever you can get from typing to much, carpal-tunnel or whathaveyou, I am going to get that problem. I probs already have that problem. My stomach is eating itself but I don't feel like going to the kitchen. It seems really far away.

Carly also eats cheese and peanut butter crackers. They are orange. Orange food, in general, is suspect. Unless it's an actual orange. Which I can't eat because I'm allergic to citric acid, duh! Howevs, I drink OJ, etc. anyhow.

I bought OJ and cigarettes for TB but then we broke up. I drank the orange juice anyhow. It made me throw up. Not because I'm allergic to citric acid, but because that was the same night that I accidentally ate that piece of paper that they put between slices of cheese? You know what I'm talking about? I was like "This lettuce tastes really funny," but I kept eating it anyhow because I need my greens. Then I realized I was eating the paper from the cheese. My stomach could not take all of that nonsense, it was like, Thanks but no.

Anyhow, I love those peanut-butter-and-cheese-crackers, though they're orange. I am glad I am not the only one who likes them. I'd eat some right now if I could. Unfortunately, I've already eaten all of them, circa a few days ago.

***

iii. Music, I:

I've become a person who moves, visibly, to the music on her iPod, in public. I can't stop listening to music, like I need a soundtrack really badly. Silence kills me. It reminds me of what used to fill it, maybe, or it's just not proper for the amount of daily excitement I've felt lately. Even sad music is a kind of excitement. It's excited enough about it's void to give it melody.

I've been eating music. I asked Carly to give me a list; she did, a good long one, I ate it. To be honest, most of the music I love was ciphered from someone else. Music's something I love [like I replaced a stolen iPod within 5 hours, a phone I waited 10 days] but have no remote talent in: can't sing, can't dance, can't play an instrument, can't read/write music, nothing. So I surround myself with people who know more and ask them to tell me what I need to hear. I love lastFM.

Seriously, I love lastfm.

Things I would make love to if I could:
-Lastfm
-Google Reader
-Trebuchet Font
-Final Draft

Haviland made me a "You'll Make it Kiddo!" CD. I remember when she first played me the Phoenix song "If I Ever Feel Better." Now I play it to myself: I ain't even playing my own game, the rules have changed well I didn't know, there are things in my life I can't control, I feel the chaos around me ...

My headphones broke almost immediately following purchase a month ago (a month? I've got no clue, somewhere between then and now I lost concept of time), because that's how they do what they do, so the music kinda twists in one ear and out the other ear, and I went to Radio Shack but they said my warranty wouldn't kick in 'til July 1st. That must have been a while ago that I went there. I think my headphones have improved since then.

Everyone at Radio Shack is retarded. Seriously.

I could probably listen to Youth Group's cover of "Forever Young" forever and be totally satisfied. Fuck fireworks.

***

iv. playlist.

heartbeats/the knife. don't cry out/shiny toy guns. who you are/tears for fears. if i ever feel better/phoenix. mary/sarah slean. city girl/tegan&sara. irreplaceable/beyonce. a better son or daughter/rilo kiley. hear me out/frou frou. let it rain/ok go. vintage people/eisley. you wouldn't like me/tegan&sara. send me an angel/real life. sober/kelly clarkson. life on mars/david bowie. puttin' on the ritz/shiny toy guns. haven't found/pras. sway/the perishers. sorry/madonna. forever young/youth group. a little respect/erasure. under water/tegan&sara. save me from myself/christina aguilera. be kind&rewind/rogue wave. laura/scissor sisters. frozen/tegan&sara. if you were here/cary brothers. jumpers/sleater-kinney. just one of thoes things/the verve remixed. must be dreaming/frou frou.

***

v. btw.

I don't get you. I can't forget what you've forgotten.

**

vi. music

Today at the gym I was listening to Rilo Kiley and the lyrics to stunned me out of my sweaty stupor: And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on ... but the lows are so extreme...

I got goosebumps.

Last Saturday night at Nation, the song finally played that I'd been trying to get everyone to remember forever by poorly singing it and describing Indian chanting. Poorly. No one knew what I was talking about, which was totes ridic as I knew I'd heard it every time I've ever gone out ever, and I don't go out that often, so clearly it plays every time anyone goes out.

I told Carly I'd have an orgasm right then if it played. Obvs that was proverbial, but I jumped up and down like I was about to explode when it DID play. Seriously, I was as happy in that moment as I've ever been. I mean, the moment when a song you haven't been able to place PLAYS, especially when you totes PREDICTED it's play at Nation on Saturday night? Tara looked at me like "Whaaa?" It was "Beware of the Boys" featuring Jay-Z/Punjabi MC.

**

vii. Our teevee show.

The thing is; teevee's a flawed format, clearly, in that it requires nothing of it's audience besides passive viewership. It's lulled our country into passive complacency and an inability to put it's own thoughts together. That, and the jarring effect of 30 randomized and often violent images/ideas per minute can't be good for anyone.

But film, we say, is a valid way to tell a story. And I think television is too -- COULD BE -- but better-- because it also provides an opportunity to create characters, to play with narrative fiction and evolution on a scale of massive import. I like that even though most of the screen is accurately an evil box, there's still people out there trying to tell stories, and I think the internet enhances that by turning those stories into words we use to communicate with people all around the world: common ground from which to tell our own stories.

I like the idea of creating people who can evolve and change over several years and tell a million stories. It seems so anti-climatic, film: you make it, two hours, finit. But there're still a few TV writers committed to honest and progressive storytelling [e.g., Alan Ball. Um. That's all]. I don't want to write a show for people to watch alone, really. I think the only advantage of TV over books is that you can enjoy it with other people. I want people to sit together and watch our show and think.

I get excited talking about it (the ... artistry of it?), like tonight in the Haviland-Carlytron-Riese three-way ichat that we all felt, at first, should be preceded by an age/sex check.

Maybe I just get excited because communication with readers and viewers is, in my opinion: the point. It always seemed silly to me, those reclusive dudes. Like, wow. You're so cool you can't talk to anyone? You just want to like, grace everyone with your brilliance and then peace out? I admire you, a little because that seems like humility, but no, I don't, because it isn't.

I like humility, obvs, it's like, my thing. Or, insofar as it's related to insecurity. I don't like it so much as feel it's something I can't change and therefore I must embrace it!

As in: tonight. Haviland's apartment, circa 6:30 pm, I was telling her how fast we'd worked on this thing and I said something nice about myself; about my writing. Like, that I was good? To have done so much in so little time ARCHHH writing that makes me miserable. bladibla. And she said: "It's really nice. To hear you say that."

A frequent convo, as quoted in an ourchart blog I wrote 20 years ago:

VIP: "So what do you do, Riese?"
Me: "Um, I go to the gym a lot."
[VIPs start looking vaguely uncomfortable]
Haviland: "She's a writer!"
Me: "Also, I like to go to Mandees and buy brightly colored bra-and-underwear sets. And I eat a lot of food. Like, all different kinds of food."
Haviland: "She has a blog, it's really good! Riese, give them your card."
Me: "Oh yeah, I have this blog."
VIP: "What's it about?"
Me: "Um, like, myself. Like, thoughts that I have about myself. Me."
Haviland: "It's totally about us! It's really funny! Like, us, and what we do, and how cool we are."
Me: "And it's also about Rite Aid."

ANYHOW There are some characters on the TV who've resonated with me. Who's stories meant something to me.

Characters who've resonated, limited at one per show, except SFU, they get two, because they rule:

-Angela Chase, My So-Called Life
-Claire Fisher, Six Feet Under
-Brenda Chenowith, Six Feet Under
-Emmet Honeycutt, Queer as Folk
-Pacey Witter, Dawson's Creek
-Josh Lyman, The West Wing
-Elmo, Sesame Street
-I really liked Peter Jennings. I was sad when he died.

OK, that's all I can think about. What other shows've been on the teevee? Hm.

I had a crush on Jacinda from The Real World London. And Kim Stolz from Americas Next Top Model. And. Um.





**

vii. Live-Journal:

It's late now. The fireworks are over, but there's persistent flashes of lightning. I'm awake because I'm supposed to be working on an ad for a copywriting job and because I was talking online about the teevee show and because I'm up. I'm writing this for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

I don't know if I have anything to say right now. I used to have a livejournal [I know, surprise, right, like I haven't already mentioned this 10,000 times]. I could just write random things about whatever. Personal things, too: the truth, or a piece of it.

Lately, I've been mute on all things personal because if I opened my mouth I'd have so much to say I might never do anything else, ever, and I might get trapped back into an impossible and endless cycle that feels a lot like running into a wall over and over again and telling everyone I like the bruises. Sometimes I just want to scream. I stopped reading those things that made me want to scream but they keep showing up in my inbox and in unexpected places. I want to scream. I have so many things I want to scream: the obvious truth, for example. But I know it'd be like the scream of a tree falling in the woods with no one sane enough to hear it. I want to scream and then have it break into tears.

Instead, I laugh. Instead, I write. Instead, I pretend like I have something to say and then I write it. Instead I just type.

Writing's the only place, I think, where I even look at emotion/feelings. I've had people scream at me and ask me if I ever wanted to learn how to feel. If I had any interest in the territory of emotional vulnerability or of emotional emotions or of emoticons which I also hate. Sometimes I decide it's safe to feel (or maybe not? Maybe I decide it's totes unsafe, and want to verify that?) and then I give them all away.

typetypetype.

I'm so much better at emotion in retrospect. If you dare me to feel in the moment, you better mean it. You better have your shit together.

See instead of having feelings, I just think about how I'm going to write about them later. I think about how someone else might feel. Instead of telling people how I feel, I write it down three years later, which's also when I've realized whatever feelings I had three years ago.

Even when I try to locate/express feelings I actually have, I feel like I'm telling a story about a girl named Marie who feels things. Real Marie is an action super hero.

She is made of plastic and she can fly.
She has no super powers.
But she goes on. At the speed of sound. Eating her own dust.

***

My tiger my heart
We're growing apart
We're trying to be friends
But it's hard sometimes
To be friends with something
That eats butterflies
And pencil sharpeners
And I think it would be
Happier being free

**

So it's almost five a.m. This is a moment when I think "What would it really mean to just click 'Publish Post'?" Nothing, right? I mean, right? Then I could just go to sleep. These are just words.