Sunday Top Ten: Automatic Fundamentals/Look At You, You're Growing Old So Young

I was thinking about a Sunday Top Ten and ten hours later I was knee-deep in the cyber-quicksand created by switching topics every five minutes, trying to escape via creating a New Topic that'd encompass All Failed Topics. A-ha!: 'TOP TEN THINGS I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT." I asked myself "is that the best you can do?" Then, myself said: "Yes, it is."

[Yes, it is: a conversation between me and memememememe.] [It was maybe two years ago or thereabouts when she drew me a diagram on scrap paper to explain to me the "me" and "not me" -- the stack-sullivan psychoanalytic theory of selective inattention. good me, bad me, not me. she was explaining to me how, exactly, I'd managed to rationalize talking my way out of accepting responsibility for being an asshole.]

So I'm just gonna ramble. Ramblerambleramble.

Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme Morons

I saw Gimme Sugar. It's a new show about lesbians. The topic is: "Lesbians are pretty!" The sub-topic: "Much like straight people on scripted reality teeevee shoes, lesbians can also drink too much and talk about nothing." The girl who narrates sounds just like Jackie Warner. It's the "scripted reality voice-over voice."

I'd like to corral the writers of Gimme Sugar and the creators of Tila Tequila into a dark cave with The Iliad, The Bible, Mediated and "All Aboard!".

The thing is ... Gimme Sugar isn't even terrible/awesome. It's just terrible. After-Ellen thinks so too. I'm not sure why I care so much about the portrayal of women -- and queer women in particular -- in the media, but I do. I care deeply. AE says, and I agree, that basically if you're already into [other, hetero-based] shows that involve "seeing young people doing nothing and clubbing and coming up with bad business ideas" then you'll like this show.

Speaking of sugar, this weekend the woman brought us breakfast and announced the contents of the tray in great detail: "splenda, sweet & low, equal," etc. Everyone in Atlantic City says: "good luck!" 'cause they're counting on the gamble. We didn't know how to gamble [at games], we just thought the city itself seemed like a funny place to go. But we got lucky, and had good luck.

My first love [of all trump cards: "first"? of all first things: love] wore those jeans with "Lucky You" on the fly. In case we got there, and I forgot.

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Taking Back the Internet: Last Week's Topic of Cyber-Talk

I don't know. We're/it's young, we're cyber-tadpoles -- still lightyears away from universal broadband access or a "worldwide" network that can provide all people worldwide w/high-speed uncensored content. There's problems with overexposure and conspicuous anonymity, the tipping balance between emotional withdrawal and frightening investment. Our backs hurt, our eyes burn, our wrists hurt. But everything has pros and cons. [Howevs, it'd be a 100% tragedy for interwebs users to inadvertently lose deep reading skills.] We live in a world where too much ice cream makes you fat. Just think about that.

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"What the future might bring, Heaven only knew.
Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease.
High battlements of thought; habits that had seemed durable as stone went down like shadows at the touch of another mind and left a naked sky and fresh stars twinkling in it."
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando
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I think we're still figuring it out. It's like when the cavemen first discovered fire. And Caveman #1 was like; "wtf why is my toe burning off?" and Caveman #2 was like; "OOOO all warmed up for the winter season!" Now, a bajillion years later, we know how to use fire responsibly, more or less. See what I mean? We're still figuring out how to keep warm without burning ourselves.

I like Emily and Keith and Tracie. I don't like Perez or TMZ or their collective insistence on permeating relevant spaces frequented by those of us who don't care.

Also, I like that the internet has enabled strong global grassroots networks like Students for a Free Tibet, smart pop culture commentary like fourfour and helpful gadgets & resources like MapQuest and Bartleby. I like when I read articles worth recommending. And poems.

I think, w/r/t Gimme Sugar and The Internet, that we've got to do our best to keep our fictions scripted. Also, we'll keep our realities improvised, and work with wherever we naturally attract reflection/attention, rather than attention for attention's sake.

In the future, we may find that the internet was invented in response to the hefty portion of the population who are simply more comfortable/eloquent when communicating via written words rather than spoken ones.

I think you can divide people into two categories: people who're content to live within anything that'll fit within (even just barely) the status quo, and people who'd like to change it. The first category also includes people who've chosen instead to live in the past, or recreate it in fear.

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The Long and Winding Road

I've traveled a lot this year. I was asked: "Do you guys think it's possible you're running away from something, maybe?" and I answered, "Obviously." I'd like a short & happy life, like Francis Macomber's, or a Short & Wondrous one like Our Friend Oscar, running could be involved. But really it's that we prefer fun to not-fun. We try to have fun. Okay, okay, it's Tinkerbell. She's a diva.

Don't get confused, I'm still only somewhat employed and owe Visa a baby or two. The rest is semantics or logistics --

Speaking of numbers, I missed Four -- me, Caitlin, Alex, Haviland -- and now my friend is back on this side of the country. Briefly, but here. Shortly, happily, wondrously.

So many things can go wrong when you're traveling, like our unexpected pullover en route to the airport to fly to The House of the Mouse -- we barely made it to the flight.

But this weekend we went to Atlantic City and we weren't surprised when they said our hotel was overbooked, since ridic snafus are our collective travel-fukù and we were prepared to pop a cot and then take a morning swim w/asbestos at the Seaside Motel [later this experience could become a rich source of anecdotes, in-jokes and makes-life-worth-it-style laughter] --- but the desk-woman tells us how the problem's been solved: we're being moved to a better hotel ... for free.

Again, that assumption about gambling. Really, we're just amused by anything that's heavily thematic -- lit up by bells & whistles & glitter & graffics and big laminated promises in disguise as the Queen of Hearts/Spades.

Then Caitlin totally WON big-time at the slot machines -- waiting for me and Alex she just stuck a nickel in and gave it a go, like to kill time and -- Magic! Later that day, an escalade took an illegal left in front of us, like that shit that happens all the time in the city and you almost die and then somehow you get a ticket for someone else's mistake 'cause you've got expired plates ... and he got pulled over!

Also, we saw Melissa Etheridge. They surprised me with it and got away with it 'cause Caitlin pointed out that she never asked for anything, so asking me to put some pep in my step for an 8 PM fireworks show wasn't much to ask-- even though I insisted it was still totally light out and we can't miss the fireworks, they're in the sky.

Anyhow, the ploy worked and we were on time for The Eth. The lesbos sang our little hearts out for every window we've ever screamed at, bare and wide-open. We listened to the gauzy-voiced acoustic assurance that sometimes love means following someone around until you've lost all your fellow travelers. Pretense-free, open-air I feel my feelings. She carved out her heart in the 90's, left it on the doorstep of a recording studio and then ran -- a prank played in the game of falling apart -- and we got to see her hold that heart in front of her face and then sing through it. Amazing.

Happy independence day!

"When I first heard "Like the Way I Do" in 1988, I had no idea that Melissa Etheridge was gay, and I thought she gave voice to us obsessive, neurotic women who long to be this direct and obvious about the neediness we feel for the men in our lives ... perhaps the joyfulness that I feel seething, overbrimming from so much lesbian music, even when it is at its most heartbreaking, has to do with the simple fact that just to have the courage to find a voice to sing with in the context of societally censored desires means that anything you say, no matter how depressing the thought, will never come across as completely dispirited."
-Elizabeth Wurtzel, "The [Fe]male Gaze."
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dear good me & bad me & not me & also me & mememe, sincerely anonymous
or "the babies were only water balloons."

What if from now on I made my blog into a retroactive game of self-indulgence. I provide excerpts from my past diaries for the present date in different years. You match the lines to the years and if you're right, you win the next book club book.

July 7th Throughout the Years, Compiled on Monday July 7th, 2008:
[Options: 1986 (age 4) , 1991 (age 9) , 1996 (age 14), 1997 (age 15), 1999 (age 17), 2000 (age 18), 2002 (age 20), 2003 (age 21), 2006 (age 24), 2007 (age 25)]
[Names have been abbreviated when appropriate]

1/Michigan: "I feel like we'll never truly connect 'cause Chris's 100% un-interested in what art has to offer him as a human being. He likes things cut and dry. He wouldn't like my writing, because he never reads, he's detached completely from literature. His scope is narrow. I'm afraid he'll try to compare his career goal to be a vet to my writing. It's not just my Top Interest, it's How I Think."

2/Boston-->Michigan: "Today we drove for five hours and we finally came home. I saw Anna first, but we had nothing to say. My room had hebrew posters all over the walls and all my animal posters except for three were gone! My drawers were broken, and there was mold in the teapot, yuck! The people who lived in our house weren't very neat! The toddler scribbled in Lewis's books. We had homemade pizza for din-din."
3/New York: "When E has the nerve to go off at me, I say-- 'It doesn't matter, I'm leaving!' E says -- 'You're not leaving soon enough.' So now -- I am. Now. I'm in the airport, going. I feel like Marc's going-away party was mine, too, not 'cause the people cared/knew about me leaving, but 'cause it's the end of something. An era. But M said, 'You're the guest of honor's special guest.'"

4/Australia:" "It was hilarious to bring these grungy surfer boys into a nice restaurant. Clinton insisted we go back to the hotel so he could experience the sauna and they'd left their bags and surfboards there. They went swimming. We took pics, they listened to our music, we talked. Jeremy made fun of our accents a lot. They go to raves at night. Clinton is 17, he dropped out of school to work in a Toyota Factory. Jeremy's 15. We have their addresses, thank god."

5/Michigan: "We made our certificates and then we decorated the knight in armour. Then we rescued the baby from the dragon. And after that we played a kind of hide and seek and some people pretended they were he dragons and some pretended they were persons who catch the dragons. The babies were only water balloons. our mommies or our daddies came and we had cake and ice cream after we had cake and ice cream we went home the end."

6/New York: "I don't know what to do, if there's anything that I even can do. It's terror. I feel powerless."

7/Michigan: "no cherry bombs, no sparklers, black cats, etc this 4th. u know, explosions -- go america. Scot took my car to canada and left me a love note. life has been up and down. absolutely unbearable, sometimes absolutely pleasant. i present the "every other day theory": one day he's delightful, the next day he balances it out by being a dick."

8/At Sea: "It's difficult to open myself up to another strong connection w/a friend this year, I feel so exhausted by last year's. I don't know if she really communicates honestly with me about when or if I bother her. She seems both set in her ways and not argumentative. Is it because we click so well, or is it 'cause she doesn't ever want to talk about what's really going on?"

9/Michigan: "Yesterday went to a whack party, talked to AG 4eva. It was weird, like a punk rock show, I don't dig that scene. At the start it made me depressed to be there. It was fresh as hell that I got to drive home though. Well, not home. To L's. Today MR and I watched Altman's Nashville, saw Casablanca at the top of the park, Amanda came just to see me! Wowsers ... I had a freaked out dream about Interlochen."
10/Michigan: "Tonight, Mr. D told me he thought I looked about 10 pounds less than I did when he last saw me. He asked me if I was okay. The doctor told me I was too skinny and asked if I'd been losing weight. All these comments make me happy. I wish none of this had ever started. I wonder why my Mom is letting me go sometimes. I wonder if I'd let my 17 year old daughter move to the same city that Son of Sam is about."

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11.
Today I wrote this, and went to bed, and thought, holy shit, I talk a lot of whack hands down totes crazy. Will I ever learn to speak the grammar?
Stay tuned!
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[all photos by julia fullerton-baten]
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So, guess: match the number with the correct year, win a prize! The Dear Diary Award, very special.