Sunday Top Ten: We Didn't Do It

"We think of our lives as a series of events ... of things happening one after another. But it's just as accurate to see our lives as a series of things that don't happen to us."
(Ira Glass, intro to "We Didn't" episode of This American Life)

She did it, she boarded and flew all the way across the country, away from New York's industrial erections and valiantly towards somewhere that made up for its failed promises in baths of well-lit potential and it wasn't just her who did it. People move in body if not in mind, and finish novels and start revolutions and quit jobs and lose weight and get really into yoga and sometimes I do and I will but when you think about it -- and I have, 'cause I have a lot of thoughts happening at once in my head -- there's way way more things that I didn't do.

Sunday Top Ten
We Didn't Do It

exhibit a: things i was gonna do

10. California Here I Come

I didn't move to California or Michigan but I L.A apartment-hunted online. I didn't say goodbye to all that and disappear like heaven on wheels but if I'd had the financial means I would've left this apartment before they asked me to but I didn't so I didn't. I didn't move to Walden Pond but I looked on craigslist for cabins in the woods. I didn't leave for the summer or the winter but I packed for both. I didn't move to Australia but I downloaded the form to get a passport and left it on my desktop where it still stands today, awaiting my attention, having survived the acquisition and subsequent fall of a new passport in the meantime.

9. You Had Time

I didn't write my book. I took a lot of notes. Mom & I voyaged to the Michigan storage space to excavate the artifacts of my little life and Mom said she'd kill me for losing the key to my locker's lock 'cause we had to pay for a chainsaw 'cause I was supposed to hold onto the key but I didn't. I read books for research and I assembled my notes & research & wrote an outline, marketing plan, etc. But I didn't write the actual book 'cause I'm not ready for such substantial truths and so I decided to write a novel instead but I didn't. But I will. "Did you know it took Diaz 11 years to write Wao?" I wrote to my agent. "This segues neatly into my next topic ..."

8. Falling is Like This

I didn't jump out the window but I did forgive you except for the few times later on when I didn't. I didn't overdose on anything though I felt my heart beat so hard inside my chest I thought it might leap right out of my body on legs of its own, bound across the city and get on a plane and leave me all alone, heartless. I didn't ever go heartless but I did get sad and mean. I thought I could make it all better and I tried but I didn't.

7. Out of Range

I didn't apply for an M.F.A. program but I sat at B&N with books and copied down lists of the best schools, sent out for brochures to put into the file folder "Graduate Programs." So I didn't move to a room of my own in Iowa City where it'd get so quiet at night that I'd feel my sober heart beat like a horse. I didn't move to Missoula to forget about reality and embrace my past friends as characters.

6. And Darling

I didn't write back to many emails & I've got 182 e-mails in my draft folder and some of them are for blog-readers. I generally try to discard drafts rather than keep them but sometimes 'cause of auto-save I didn't.

Of the 182 e-mails I never sent: 33% = to exes, 33% = jobs , 20% = angry rants to friends & 10% = emails I thought I DID send but didn't.

These are the titles of some of the emails I didn't send: Sancho is Not Retarded, obvs it's me so it's not good news, STOP., Typist Position, that's fine I'll send you three emails in a row I'm not above that, portfolio samples, copy gig, part-time assistant, your blog makes my firefox crash, fall or silence, UPDATE, room for rent, communication, re: apts and such, Pick Me! So Qualified!, um., guestbian blog, the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs, this is stuff for my book that i am going to write about myself because i am self-centered, home is where my habits have a habitat, some things i wanted to say to you.

exhibit b: things i was gonna do

5. If I Gave You my Number

I didn't try to track down anyone's phone number when my phone got stolen so I didn't ever keep in touch with anyone I knew before that time though I didn't ever say I would anyway so I didn't.

4. Take me Anywhere

I didn't go to Reno or China or the West Indies but I researched plane fares and packing lists and room rates. I didn't go to Paris and I didn't apply for Yaddo but I did download the application & inserted it into the "writing-work related" folder and I bookmarked some web pages.

3. Walking With A Ghost

I didn't start The Factory but I watched Factory Girl and started to read The Diary of Andy Warhol but I didn't finish it. I looked at warehouses online all over the country but I didn't look at any in 3-D but I still believe in it and I'll make it happen, I didn't yet but I will.

2. Fix You Up

I didn't make my resumè into the kick-ass thing it wants to be but I did look at resume examples and read books about resumès and made ten different copies of my resumè for different kinds of jobs but I don't like any of them. I didn't put together a copywriting portfolio but that's 'cause Brian didn't send me my samples and I asked him twice. I didn't call Natalie's temp agency and I didn't work at the new Starbucks just to make it go faster and I didn't start that Sacred Altar business with Mary or sell that teevee show with Carly and I didn't send that new pitch to New York Magazine and I didn't do the Best Idea EVER yet but I WILL.

1. As Cool as I Am

I didn't stop writing this blog. I didn't do another comment contest or make Autowin totebags or black shirts or continue Great Mysteries of Life or The Year in Review. But I mean I'm still writing this blog. That's something.

I thought the whole world was gonna change in January and it did but it didn't change exactly how we'd expected. But when I say now that I feel like things are falling in place I'm not taking about magic anymore, or blessings or karma, I'm just talking about people and stability and change and calm that's tangible. It's like the year of magical thinking, and if you haven't read it I'm not giving anything away when I quote the last lines: "You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. [John] told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

I love ending a blog on an obliquely optimistic note. I think if I sound vague, it's 'cause I feel vague too. Vague ... but good.

I'm trying to think of the biggest thing I didn't do and I'll write about that later but first I'll ask you; what didn't you do this year?

This Girl Called Automatic Weirdo

Hi! I've got some things I wanna say and so I'm gonna write them down here in this google doc, then cut and paste them into a blog and then publish it. Carly's coming over in about 30 minutes and then Haviland 'cause we're gonna make some vlogs that're gonna be awesome and make you LOL your asses off, so I've got about 20 minutes to figure out what I need to say and say it, and I'll edit it later because it's gonna be totes muddled. First off; I'm not depressed right now, I'm not in a Bell Jar or Emily Dickinson mood, nor am I about to renounce all things in the world, delete my blog or myspace, go out and drink into an oblivion, fuck 'til I forget who I am, change all my goals in life, move to Michigan or run away to my emo cave, suddenly fix relationships I've let falter or neglect new and thriving ones. In fact, I'm not gonna do anything besides exactly what I've been doing and planned to do, like tonight we're making some vlogs, I've got some phone calls and emails to return, I'm behind on Google Reader like WHOA, I still haven't edited last week's blog or this one, I need to clean my room I think, and tonight Tila Tequila's gonna meet Dani's parents which is a very exciting moment for everyone in the whole wide world, obvs. I think I owe a lot of blog comments, emails, etc.

Okay so I'm just writing, seriously not deleting anything unless it's a typo, this is a totes stream of consciousness nonsense. [UPDATE: I've edited it as little as possible just so it makes sense, but remains almost exactly what I originally wrote. Sorry, I used "its" wrong and it was ruining my life.] I think I'm going to finish the secrets blog this week, or maybe not, but I probably will. It might not make sense and you don't have to comment, maybe it'll be weird?

My brain's a little confused these days, it's trying to wrap itself around paradox and that's hard to do when I've got a lot of lock-boxes and storage space up there that's already maxed out and when I've got so much I'm excited about and for and when I feel so much of ME and so much of my friends have changed over the past few months in a way that's really quite beautiful. I think we've become more humble and I hope I've inspired a few friends to live more for the moment and wait for the next joke and to dance, I like dancing even though I'm bad at it. I like a lot of things that are actually a lot like dancing.

About a month ago, one of my best friend's infant brother died suddenly from an aneurysm, he'd only been alive for about six weeks. It just didn't make any sense whatsoever. I remember when I told Lozo about this baby's death and he said nothing surprises me anymore or something to that effect. I was like, but wait wait isn't that so fucked up? A baby? Like, wtf world? And then all that other shit happened with the job and me getting fired and all this terrible out-of-the-blue stuff w/r/t Olive and he was like seriously, nothing surprises me anymore. I remember when I first read about this on his blog, I thought, OMG, seriously? REALLY PAPI? Like, no. You know? just NO. And when he told me that he wasn't surprised by this shit that was knocking my world off its feet I said no, if we accept such tragedies and also if we accept such unfair and ridiculous behavior out of the blue and when we accept the failure of the medical system to take care of the mentally ill properly and when we accept death before the word "surprise" turned tragic on our tongues then how do we prevent these tragedies and he said, well, we can't. I said how do we keep on? But I already know the answer to that question, obviously. I know how we keep on, wanna know how? WE JUST DO.

In the ensuing weeks following that whole week of hell in which I almost broke my computer from crying onto my keyboard, I swear I read about six bloggers write about the death of a loved one from illness or something unexpected. Perhaps you are one of them. I seriously feel like every day my Google Reader announced one obituary at least, and every time I was like "Seriously, G-d, wtf, stop it! Stop it now!"

Over the weekend I was frolicking with two people I love very much and having a good time and enjoying things and being laid-back. As I did this someone else I love very much almost died but didn't. I don't want to say anything about it but that, and I won't, and please don't ask, or guess who it was, or anything, and I'm not asking for pity or sympathy or even trying to incite a reaction of any kind or anything. I just need to say this to get on. I'm just saying this : it happened and I cannot loose this person, I absolutely refuse to.

So, it was Monday and Cait and Haviland and I were at an art exhibit called WHACK! at this D.C museum in a room dedicated to feminist porn from the 70's and there were all these naturally hairy and un-airbushed women fucking with strap ons and whipping each other and making out with 10 people at once and got this text and I thought right away that I knew who it was texting and I picked it up ready to read something totally adorable that would make me smile and other things but instead it was not that or from who I'd for some reason assumed it'd be from, instead it was news that someone I love very much had almost died and so I sort of just fell on the ground all of a sudden because my heart fell out of my body and Cait was like "What's going on?" and for a long time I could not speak, and then I did.

Then we were in the gift shop later and Natalie called excited about this awesome vaycay we're taking next year and I got so happy talking to her because I love Natalie and am excited for vaycay and I don't feel bad about that either, or weird about it, even, or weird about anything.

Okay so moving on; everything is fine w/r/t this person I love and will be fine. [By that I mean she is alive, fortunately.] That's all I'm gonna say on that.

On Sunday night, a beautiful girl I've never met, but who was one of the people who sent me a secret I'd written about on my secrets blog and one of the people who thanked me afterwards, was hit by a car when she was driving home on her motorcycle. I'll call her Kelly, because that's what I called her in her secret. Kelly read my blog in the first place because she'd been told about it by someone who loved her very much, one of my Top People/Brightest Ring Of Angels, who I'll call "B," was an inspiration to C and helped her to change in ways that were visible, tangible, gorgeous. When B first met Kelly, B said "she's totally out of my league, stunning, kind ..." On Monday, Kelly, after bleeding from her brain for hours and hours and hours, died. She was 26. What's worse, if anything could be worse [not worse, but also terrible and tragic], is that B's done this before. She's already lost someone super-duper-close to her-- NECESSARY (what a word! how nothing truly can be, after all, except life itself!) -- to her from a car accident before. I literally did not think that things like this were possible. I mean, I know from tragedy, obvs, but in some weird way I felt protected by my father's death, like terrible things might still happen to me [and have, from time to time, relatively] but I wouldn't have the exact same thing happen to me again any time soon, no more unexpected or unbearable deaths in a top spot.

When I read about what happened to Lozo in April, I couldn't fathom it. When I relay the entire story of my summer to friends, or the story what happened in October with Olive, I witness shock and awe and more often than I'd like -- disbelief, actual disbelief, these things do not happen in the world they live in either, or so they thought. Like how we all thought for a moment on 9-11 that it was a movie.

So this weekend, I was driving back. I'd had a fun weekend with girls I love and couldn't live without (don't knock on anything, certainly not some dead tree, because there's really no such thing as supersition, it's just an abstraction, all we have really is faith and hope and love, srsly), I realised I'm maxed out on expectation. Stephen Dunn, in one of my favorite poems of all time, "Grudges," wrote this: "Easy for almost anything to occur/Even if we've scraped the sky, we can be rubble./For years those men felt one way, acted another." Obvs it's about 9/11, and the last verse contains, among other words, these lines: "Before you know it something's over/Suddenly someone's missing at the table./It's easy (I know it) for anything to occur -- "

When I read that poem, I thought of my father's heart suddenly attacking and dying, I thought of 9-11 which didn't effect me personally [I am lucky for that], but effected I think everyone's ideas of the Possible and Impossible, at least those of us protected in America and relatively privileged in our lives so far, just a reminder of the implicit mortality of life. Now, when I read that poem it seems universally applicable, and I guess that's sad as hell, but well, life is sad sometimes, and what can we do? Which I guess is what Lozo said when he wrote that top ten for me , and I can't believe I'm quoting wisdom from Lozo, but oh well.

I don't intend to make any dramatic decisions or react as I've reacted in the past to these crises of faith -- in many ways my life's been one long reaction to November 14th, 1995. I'm not threatening benders or a loss of control or inhibition or becoming totally healthy or Zen or really changing any of my present habits. I'm not less excited or energised or happy about any of the truly fantastic things that are happening right now and nothing has or will change how I feel about everything that's going on and all the people I've extended purely excited and optimistic energy towards while simultaneously moderating tragedy on the other line. I'm not numb or over-feeling. I'm not impatient with people's little problems and I'm not any different than I've ever been about how I feel everyone's entitled to their own sadness, their own tragedies, I'm not less worried about the aesthetics of my thighs or my expectations for the fucking L Word premiere or anything.

I guess I'm just slightly more grateful to be alive and I guess I wanna say also, and I say this purely, and not like, cheesy or trying to make anyone react, that ... well, okay, recently Haviland and I were talking about our career goals and I realised suddenly that most of mine are no longer so urgent as they once were. There's a lot of things I want to do still obvs, and sooooo many projects I'm really extra excited about like the teevee show and the BOYSHORTS and my new website and my book and our vlogs and etc. But all I ever wanted to do from writing was help people or help people through times that hit them hard, and I feel so grateful to have done that for so many of you. If you've ever emailed me or commented to tell me how you feel or if I told your secret and you said it changed you, that is the most fucking beautiful thing ever. If I made you LOL or like The L Word more or feel okay about who you are even for half a second, that's worth more than a New York Magazine article or a Conde Nast job or a million dollars or maybe two chicks at once too. After all, the jokes are all we have, guys. Seriously, I think LIFE IS NOT BULLSHITTING WITH US SO WE SHOULD STOP BULLSHITTING WITH EACH OTHER. Totally just used all caps, next thing I'm going to be emailing you about enlarging your penis or pissed at you about something retarded or I'll be Carly texting me to say I GOT AN IPHONEIPHONEIPHONEIPHONE which my phone has never forgotten because every time I type "I," the t9w is like, "oh do you want to say IPHONEIPHONEIPHONE" and I'm like, no, but I'm glad somebody did. I'm excited about the Britney Spears album and about mashed potatoes for Christmas and about going shopping to get gifts for people and about 2008 and about dancing and about hopefully becoming a better person too, about The Planet Podcast and about writing and publishing more and sleeping and being sad sometimes and laughing and making out and going to strip clubs with Lozo. There's a lot of things I want, obvs, as we must want as we are wanting monkeys. Also, I swear, I'm not on crack. I believe in G-d, the children, and that I can fly. Clearly.

Anyhow, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I'm grateful to what I've got now that have made these recent blows easier to weather, and I'm happy to have so many friends who I've met through my blog and know what they're getting into therefore, friends who haven't gotten annoyed at me when I pull crazy shit like deleting my blog or being totally sentimental and ridiculous or exploiting cliche or myself or telling things about other people maybe I shouldn't say, or relishing in attention I might not deserve, or attention that's not healthy for whoever's providing it.

OK so Carly is gonna be here soon. I just wanted to type this stuff out, and it makes me feel important to have a place to put it, because I am a fundamentally ridiculous person. This year has sucked for so many of you, and for me too sometimes, but wow I sure have learned a lot.

You guys should totes cry if you need to and laugh too. Life is really funny, seriously, have you ever seen it? It's fucking ridiculous and hilarious and random as hell. It's fucking tragic. So you know, like hang in there. I'm not gonna say it'll get better but it'll be an experience for sure.

Today I sat down to write a journal entry in my paper journal and all I ended up writing was two pages that started like this: "Tara, I forgive you," and kept going like that, you know, like, also forgave kids who made fun of me in middle school and my retarded ex-boyfriends and the guy who didn't care that I said "no" and just about everyone except Ilene Chaiken and George W. Bush and then I forgave Tara again and again, like Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard every week during the opening of "The Simpsons."

I know there are a lot of of people I've wronged too and I'm sorry, and I'll probably fuck up again 100 times while I'm still alive, and I'll be sorry when I do.

I'll probs emo out on y'all 100 more times too and get wrapped up in self-pity or self-centered excitement and I'm not really sorry for that, actually. You shouldn't be either when you do those things. I've never judged anyone for anything because we've all got our dark unbearable secrets, things I've done that maybe you wouldn't like me anymore if you knew about, habits I need to break, commitments I've failed on and stuff. But there's a lot of things I'm totally doing good on right now.

Also, I am going to find this entire post unbearably embarrassing and completely retarded and/or inappropriate in about 10 hours.

Also, clearly I am disassociating right now, but oh well, it's a great strategy. Also, I love Six Feet Under, it's the best show ever, you should all watch it.

Rain

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

(Raymond Carver)

Ok! Carly's here, ttyl.

That's all. No point. I told you I was a total weirdo. Later, gators

Sunday Top Ten: Temporary Battles Can Take Up Half Your Life

Just so y'all know, I'm leaving this blog to become a Slam Poet, like in that movie SLAM!. I've never seen it, but I saw a poetry "slam" once at Sarah Lawrence, it was retarded, Sarah Lawrence students shouldn't try to slam anything besides each other. The poems were the lovechild of Ani DiFranco lyrics and the sound of fake mall waterfalls, and they were read out loud with lackluster slam-spirit by cherub girls in camisoles smelling like Tom's of Maine. I'm gonna replace Auto-Win with an auto-play flash-player that'll cycle "Umbrella" by Rhianna and the Tegan & Sara "Umbrella" cover over & over for all of time. That'd make y'all way happier than I ever can. Seriously, listen to that song and tell me if you are still sad? I doubt it.

This week's Sunday Top Ten might sound kinda like, glum? But it's not. Also, I'm gonna do "Things That Are Easier Than I Thought They'd Be" later this week, to like, even it out, or something. Feel free to tell me what to think, I'll believe anything.

Also, Lozo put up our vlog. You should check it out, 'cause there's a really productive world-changing conversation on the comment thread w/r/t "Haviland & Riese: Hot or Not?"
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SUNDAY TOP TEN:
THINGS THAT ARE HARDER THAN I THOUGHT THEY'D BE

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10. Building This Dresser
So I've been building this dresser, the construction manual lists approximately 260 steps. It's taken about 100 hours to construct, thus inspiring this post. I'm totes thrilled to've even received it, and obvs putting it together is a small price to pay, and besides, it's good for my arms which don't get a workout now that I'm no longer toting heavy plates of food or working on the railroad all the live-long day. Speaking of hand jobs, I was in such a state with the state of the dresser that I offered Lozo a massage with a happy ending in exchange for dresser construction, but then I thought that'd be kinda awkward probs for our friendship, and wouldn't necessarily entail less upper body strength than the building so I took it back. Not officially, but I never arranged for the exchange. Also, I can do it myself, I'm Bob Vila. UPDATE: Totes DID IT. holla. HOLLA!
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9. Recapping The L Word

[original screenshot from a Season Three Recap]

I guess that if you look at it logically [something I willfully select NOT to do in most circumstances cause looking realistically at one's bank account or one's schedule is often a short-cut to depression and overwhelming sensations of futility. 'Cause if you don't think about it, it's still possible you could finish it in an hour, why not?] this show is an hour long --
-Pausing at least once a scene for screencaps, about 35 scenes per show: three hours
-Transcribing dialogue from the show and from friends: two hours
-Photo-shopping photos of my friends from the viewing party and inserting them: one hour
-Making graphics: one hour
-Actually writing about the show: endless/priceless.
All in all about 20 hours of nonstop fun. Then I added time to it by acquiring a well-needed but obsessive proper grammar & spelling habit [some of the S3 recaps that no one read but me were plagued with grammatical and spelling errors, and rarely cohesive.] Obvs I didn't anticipate this time commitment when I decided to do it. This is why next season I'm getting a screencaps intern. I'll give you college credit and a back rub if you're hot.

Anyhow, Carly and I re-watched the pilot the other day, and I'm excited to currently be hard at work at recapping it for AutoStraddle! I know -- why Riese? Why? The answer is: because I obviously love it.
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8. SAT Math, Five Years Later
I "auditioned" to be a Kaplan teacher and succeeded, I just had to re-take the SATs to prove I could maintain the same high score I'd had in high school. Easy, yeah? No. I brushed up on my math pre-re-test, but I hadn't realised how much longer it'd take to do math now that it wasn't second nature. I only finished half the math section when the time ran out. Then I added "Kaplan tutor" to the list of "jobs Marie thought she had between July '04 and January of '05 that Totes Fell Through, Therefore Ruining Her Life Forever. JK Not Forevs, Things're Better Now."
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7. Getting Our TeeVee Show on the Air Immediately
Sometimes I talk about something constantly then suddenly stop talking about it. I kinda did this with the teevee show but don't be alarmed -- nothing's gone wrong, we're just in a waiting period. Also we've got real clear and direct ways to improve the pilot when the time comes: things that seem obvious now that we've stepped back in order to see it fully.

I imagined the writing-the-teevee-show process to be like Field of Dreams, which is probs responsible for many similarly executed projects, like, there've been all these crap shows that make it all the way to air, surely someone'd see ours and greenlight it immediately. We shall write it, the development deal shall come, like it happens in the success stories you read about. I guess no one publishes non-success stories. Oh wait, yeah they do; it's called "blogs" and "World's Wildest Police Chases." JK. That'd be cool, if we got into a police chase and then, when captured, we'd be like "marie lyn bernard dot blogspot dot com!" that'd be the best viral marketing ever. Reality show marketing. We could get Carly on COPS getting arrested for crack whoring and she could plug the show in between "motherfuckers!" Would that be meta? I'm not sure. I think "meta" is the new "irony" -- "irony" being a grossly misused word these days, especially by me. Maybe Alanis should write a song about "Meta." JK. She'd really fuck it up.
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6. Doing my Hair
Short hair is totes harder than long hair. For example, first thing in the A.M; I look like Season Three Pilot Shane. It magically deflates within about 2 hours [I wash my hair post-gym, unless I'm going somewhere in the morning, which um, I haven't done in a while], but its post-shower behavior is highly unpredictable. Just when I think I've discovered the ideal combo of drying, ironing, product and styling, four days later my hair will rebel and say it's not down with that routine anymore, then I'm back to the drawing board.

Haviland thinks it's grown out to bordering-on-bowlcut and she'd like to trim it but I responded: "No, it's like the Beatles, I like it!"

John Lennon & Friends for Wax

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5. Writing my Book
Obvs this has been a bit of a challenge.
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4. Moving On
I searched my gmail for "harder." Aside from stumbling upon some suggestive "harder! faster! wetter!"s, almost half the results were from a few weeks ago, when I kept saying that I'm waiting for things to get easier, but instead they keep getting harder and harder. Things've been lightening a bit, though, lately. Not the weight of these untangled things aforementioned as "getting harder " [these untethered wrongs with no space to right themselves now in the clear where "real" means the same thing to everyone involved, where perception looses it's fog and becomes fair game] -- those things remain the same level of hard, like other striking losses I've experienced. But the coping part's become lighter lately and there are other areas in which things have been relatively bright, promising, brilliant, huge, everything, enough. I've been blessed, really, in so many ways, by so many things, and, not to sound freaky, or hark back to a time of apocalyptic predictions and various second-coming related verse, but the way things came together to furiously and gloriously distract me immediately and thrust me fully back into living with functional social normality before I had a chance to absorb the possibilities regarding what I might eventually face in the future as well as what I was truly experiencing emotionally at the time -- and then the way things started turning around just as I'd hit all-time incapacitation and agoraphobia levels a few weeks ago -- I was always honest that I believed in G-d, I really truly do, and I think there's gotta be something divine or spiritual and trying really, really hard out there, there's gotta be something like that who's aiming for everything, a strange, tempting, dangerous ideal ...
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3. Writing This Blog Post
Seriously, I feel like every day's mitigated by hardness, so this would be easy -- things that're heavier than I expected, lines longer, processes more complicated, people more unpredictable. But perhaps not, but I don't think that's because life is particularly easy or I'm good at it, I'm totes not, but that I manage expectation really carefully -- that's why when I give someone my heart, it's generally someone who's swept me away before I had time to weigh it out and determine likely I couldn't handle the suspense. This is pretty easy to analyze psychologically -- I've got this little girl in my gut who wanted a warning before she heard he was already dead, this like, fourteen year old who'd just gone to McDonald's with her friends from Theatre Club and had a two-cheeseburger meal with no toppings, who wished there'd been some kind of illness instead, some hours, days, years, to prepare for this premature death, to readjust her mind slowly to the way things really are -- it's not that I avoid unwise choices. I just try to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out better than that, lest it be taken from me suddenly and without warning. I can't prevent sudden tragedy, so all I can do is prevent anyone's loss being truly tragic. I'm careful of people. If I let them in, put something at stake [something=risking substantially life-changing loss], it means I've either been given no choice in the matter or, I guess, I've got no choice in the matter. Love's like that. When choosing -- I choose to not put it all on the line.

And also: I am, like Crystal said today too, afraid that as soon as I let someone in, they might see ME, and then be like, omg, this is not what I signed up for, and then I'm doomed. I know this moment will come eventually with people ... and I guess that's my guarantee that no matter how good and serious anything is, it'll eventually end when they see me, I mean, really see me, and so, therefore, it's best to not get into it to begin with, or to make the revelation matter.

Also: a lot of things falling under this category -- "Things That Were Harder Than I Expected" -- are Private Things or Obvious Things [e.g., "getting my life together," "reducing word count," "staying in touch with friends," getting a six pack" or other topics I often mull over], like I keep thinking of things and disqualifying them for one of those reasons. That's the main problem with writing this.
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2. Walking in High Heels

[This photo shoot was the first time I wore heels, seriously.]

I didn't realise there was really anything to it, aside from just being a bit more on top of things. But it's like, balance. That's fine -- the walking part is fine. It's the noise! I kinda walk like an elephant. I don't look like an elephant. I look like a human girl named Marie, sometimes called Riese. But when I walk, you might be like, "Is that an elephant lumbering by my room for a 3 A.M. drinkie?" and it's actually me, just regulating, just walking. I'm not saying I lumber because it's true, but 'cause people've told me so. And I trust them. In heels though, I just feel like I'm making my presence so unavoidably present, and I hate that. Click, clack, look, at, me, lumber, click/clack.
*
1. Getting freshdirect to deliver Sausage, Egg & Cheese Lean Pockets.

I've put in a product request for this several times over the last few years, to the point where they probs're like "her again, really? Tell her to have some toast." Do any of you order from Fresh Direct? Because if so, please go to the product request area which's in the "New Products" area. There's an asshatty looking guy and an aesthetically pleasing graphic and you just click that there thing and tell them that you'd like them to carry Lean Pockets, Sausage, Egg & Cheese. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Sunday Top Ten Part Two: I Refuse To Believe That It's Only Me Feeling

First of all. Good news. Good good news. The source of HPS's email conundrum: her signature. This issue has been targeted and subsequently conquered.

So: more questions in life, not in dreams. I have weird dreams. Last night, I was on vaycay with my Dad and my brother, and then we went home and I had all these Calvin & Hobbes books, and I was like, "I should text Carly about her tattoo." That's not supposed to make sense, it's just what happened. In my dream. Haviland was sleeping next to me, dreamily, with her earplugs. Platonically, obvs.

Questions. Things that I do not understand. I gotta say, the first round of this was pretty hot. The "59th Annual Kings County Tony's" are still raging on -- but Jaimie's informed me that they're possibly not incorrect -- AND we've fixed Haviland's email, I've got plans to fix my phone problem, and Stef was not The Biggest Loser. Um, did anything else happen? I forget what my questions were now. Oh, yes! I encouraged one person to buy a book, so we're closer to fixing that problem. I should ask "Why Is There World Hunger?" But, you know, that's awfully ambitious, and I am, as we all know, a bit of a self-depricant. I just made up that word, P.S. Actually, I thought it was a real word until my auto spell-checker underlined it, informing me of it's Non-Reality.

SUNDAY TOP TEN, PART TWO: ITEMS 5-1 OF
THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF LIFE THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

---

5. Why Do Men Yell At Girls On the Street?
I've gotta say first off, the short hair's reduced this by at least 85% which's, honestly, fucking amazing. This city is a hotbed of women who've got interesting methods of dealing with women. I don't get it. Does it work?  I look down, and I walk, and I seethe, 'cause I've got my little baby wrath. If I'm eating an ice cream cone and some dude yells that he'd like a lick -- chances are pretty high I'm not gonna give it to him, unless it's like, Leisha Hailey, or um, Abraham Lincoln. 'Cause you gotta admit that actually, it'd be pretty awesome to hang out w/Abraham Lincoln. Also, if I'm with another girl and you tell me that it's "a beautiful thing" or that you support gay marriage or something, I hope you vote and masturbate a lot. I don't know what I hope or what that means. type type type. I'm fairly confident that there's not a huge crossover between Cajolers and Autowin-Readers, so this is really just me doing what I do best, which's complain to no avail. To hell with all that progress we made earlier this week, let's WHINE.

---

4. Why Does Everything Take So Long?
Like, when was the last time I said to myself "Wow, that was quicker than I expected?" Um. Hahaha. No, seriously, a long time ago.

---

3. Why Does my Gym Suck So Bad?
New York Sports Club sucks. I'd join a more expensive gym, but: 1)I've got no money and NYSC currently just continues to charge my credit card obvs, 2)NYSC is already about as expensive as gyms go. I mean, the next step up'd be like, Equinox, or Reebok, or New York Health & Raquet Club, but then I'd be surrounded by Serious Douchetards and it'd be farther than two blocks away. New York Sports Club charges $90/month and what do we get? Crap. I've complained about NYSC before, so I'll be brief and only mention here New Complaints:

-Many of the machines (about 33%) audibly creak or make otherwise unbearable noises, and there're rarely signs warning you of this. Really the best you can hope for is that no-one notices that it's you doing all that creaking, 'cause then people will start glaring at you, like "get off that machine, it is creaking super-loud and annoying everyone," when they oughta be glaring at the maintenance staff, who're doing nothing.

-The magazine rack is a total tease. I don't even know why it's there. I've stumbled upon an Entertainment Weekly maybe twice and GQ once, but generally it literally contains CATALOGS (Like, is that good gym reading? Maybe it is if you can afford things in catalogs. Also I'm not talking good catalogs like delia*s, but useless ones like um, furniture homewares whatevs. I don't know, are catalogs good gym reading, you tell me, I'm the expert.) and back-issues of Cookie (a parenting magazine, not, unfortunately, a magazine about Cookies).

-Jackie Warner does not work there.

Does your gym suck? Does everyone's gym suck? My gym in Ann Arbor, Liberty, was awesome. That's the Brazilian Women's Soccer team in the picture, no joke.

---

2. Why Does [redacted] magazine continue to rock my world, month after month?
Although it's clearly just the nature of the beast [is that the right expression? Whatever means like, obviously, "a natural consequence of the freelance writing biz to begin with"?] that just happened to befall me at The Worst Moment Ever, one might think my affections for this publication would've lessened following the Great Article Kill of '07. I've tried to hate them but I don't. It's my favorite magazine. This isn't even intended as a way to sleep myself into the "comments" section they've recently added to the front of the mag, which, p.s., I think is totes retarded [and you can quote me on that] or garner a staff position [though obvs I wouldn't mind one, I suspect this isn't the most mature path to such a thing], I genuinely find this magazine to consistently rock my world.

I've blogged about them before: on their bizarre habit of declaring the Mood-of-the-Moment and then contradicting themselves the following week, the "I am" cover story about the "ME" generation which inspired me to create Riese's 15-Year-Old MySpace Page, their "Best of New York" feature which inspired my short-lived "Best of Not New York" feature, um, and, etc., etc. Bla bla bla, me me me.

Okay, so:
1. (August 27th) This story, "Conspiracy of Two: Why did Artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake Commit Suicide? A Chronicle of Their Descent Into Madness," literally gave me goosebumps and actually partially inspired my August OverShare; "they were artists, after all, and artists are allowed a degree of lunacy" ... looking at this article gives me goosebumps again, all over again, it like, stabs me and guts me, this fucking article.
2. (October 1st) On a lighter note, the unthinkable's recently happened to me: my agoraphobia's resulted in a lessened desire to go to the gym, previously cited as the One Thing I Always Can Do. No longer true. Even though my habit of exercising is not an attempt to get thinner, as I am already thin, I still enjoyed "Does Exercise Really Make Us Thinner?: The Scientist and the Stairmaster: Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner--and why we're wrong" it's like, the ultimate validation for lazy-asses everywhere. Genetics is Destiny, y'all, so give the fuck up, sorz. Personally, I can give you this advice: when depressed or overwhelmingly passionate regarding someone who's got my heart and/or body, I get emaciated. When not at this elevated or rock-bottom state, I stay the same. Exercise's pretty much irrelevant, but it gives you endorphins and has kept me alive even though most other parts of my life are dedicated to the pursuit of pleasures that're not so good for my heart, like drugs, not sleeping, drinking coffee, drinking alcohol and heartache. Also I'm always letting things tug at my heartstrings. Haha. Puppets. Ha. Hm, you know Heart the band? Good band. Know Heart the song? Good song. Know heart the organ? Good organ, beware of attacks.
3. Other articles I've enjoyed recently include: August 13th's "The Near Fame Experience," about the aftermath of Bravo TV-reality stardom, "The Deliverymen's Uprising" about the shitty conditions and attempted unionizing of NYC's delivery guys [I always overtip, now moreso] and "Awkward Phase" about Michael Sera, August 20th's "Why New Yorkers Live Longer" which points out why you totes should exercise and reinforces my monthly hypocrisy theory about this magazine and September 3rd's "Watching Matt Drudge," because I'm always intrigued by the simultaneously famous & illusive. Also, August 6th's look at secret gay relationships enabled by craigslist: "Married Man Seeks Same for Discreet Pleasure," and July 2nd's reminder of how much cooler everything was before we were born, "Long Hot Summer of Love."
4. Following the "1" theme to "stories about quasi or completely insane artists": Sep.24th's "How Edward Mapplethorpe got His Name Back: His long, tortured road through art, drugs, and brotherhood," October 1st's "The Life Obsessive with Wes Anderson," September 17th's "MisShape's After-Party" (I just noticed this was written by one of the best editors I've ever had the pleasure to work with, at nerve obvs, Michael Martin, which's also funny as we were banned from pitching party-photo-related stories at editorial meetings, in addition to any Scientology, Star Wars or burlesque related stories) and 'Spring' Allergy: Jonathan Franzen because I love Jonathan Franzen and Spring Awakening: The Musical both.
5. Just today: Totes overstayed my elliptical trainer's welcome reading a solid cover story about the hypothetical Hilary Clinton presidency re: Bill, "The First: Female President, Male First Lady, Former President in the White House" and, for some bizarre reason unknown to me as I find real estate to be resolutely Not Interesting, "Apoplectic at the Apthorop." Like, I was glued to that article. Sometimes their cover art is totally retarded though, I gotta say.

---

1. Why Aren't We Massively Faboulous/Achieving Our Wildest Dreams In Life/Writing and/or Starring In "The L Word"?
[This question, unlike, say "Why is my phone bill so high?" is more-or-less rhetorical, like, I'm not asking anyone who's reading this to help us in this area, as you've (you=readers) all been remarkably and inspirationally helpful in every way you possibly could be as far as this is concerned, OBVS.]

Eddie: Your epitomb. What is that you want on your epitomb?
Patsy: I want: "She was fantastic...."Patsy was here."
Eddie: No, daring, you can just have "Patsy Stone".
Patsy: Oh, Eddy, Eddy. Wait for this. Wait for this: "Eddy: Still no thinner."
Eddie: These are really funny. We could sell those.

[She calls it "epitomb," I know she means "epitaph."]

Did you read The Devil Wears Prada? That book sucked. Also, The Hills? I just don't get it. There're so many things that I don't get. The L Word? The weirdos that always win America's Next Top Model? Elisabeth Hassleback? I may've mentioned this before.

I feel like this one -- "1" -- is probs inappropriate on a number of levels, including: totes biting the hands that [literally] feed and validate and agree with us, there are children starving AND un-fabulous all over the world, I think I've talked about it before, probably more than once. Just pontificating, and sharing with you a piece of our world, because ...

It's just that: to be honest, this is, seriously, our Number One Mystery of the World Conversation Topic. And for some reason I continue to feel like I must always Be Honest. Srsly. (It's less serious when you spell it like that.)

I mean, did you hear Haviland sing "Part of Your World" on my cruise video? Well, yeah. I've been described as probs no less enjoyable than whomever wrote the copy for my smartwater bottle or wrote some crap somethingsomething. Why aren't we [we=all my wonderful talented friends] as fabulous as Eddie & Patsie, Paris & Nicole, Ariel Levy & The Wife of Ariel Levy or Ernie & Bert? Like, I want to be like in the Oliver and Company song: "Perfect Isn't Easy," which COINCIDENTALLY I happened to lip sync ON MY FUTON in the mid-nineties, and I think I used a necktie as a boa, which was a little forewarning of things to come.

One might argue: in order to become a famous author, I need to write a book. To which I would say: touche.

It's weird, over here, on this side of things. It's like we're so close we can touch it, we can wear its wigs and its shoes. But it's also very distinctly Not It. I guess we don't know if we'd like "It" either, we're just guessing, and mostly, we want stability, somewhere good to start from instead of to look at. Somewhere with less roadblocks.

I clearly can't talk about this in any rational sense. Because -- because life is irrational, p.s.

Off topic, kinda: Sometimes, almost anything seems better than this, even things that are worse, or were worse, at the time. Sometimes it's refreshing to get shaken to the core -- no, it's actually terrible -- but it's more exciting while surviving the shakedown than to be wrecked on the other side, which's like, not only just as depressing, but slower, and with no chance of instant turnaround. I clearly am no longer talking about anything. Let's segue, shall we?

Yes, lets: fear is the color you've all exposed, now I gotta get up here and prove the importance of my clothes of my pose ...

---

So there're a lot of other mysteries of life that didn't make the cut, which means I might continue on this topic for a few more posts, even though it'll no longer be Sunday or officially part of the Sunday Top Ten or potentially "good." Many interesting topics've been passed over, like "Why does Kozmo.com not exist anymore?" and "Who watches Everybody Loves Raymond even though My So-Called Life got canceled?", "Iraq: WTF?", "Why do I wear makeup to the gym?", "Why is it so difficult to perform very simple tasks?" and "Why does that one Rilo Kiley song have like, a whole minute of empty space at the end?" "Why doesn't i-tunes sell every Tegan & Sara song ever written?" "Why're we perpetually out of paper towels and/or toilet paper even though we're all super good at stocking up?" "Why do all music lyric sites have 500 pop-up ads?" etc. No seriously, there are other good ones I promise. All up in the ol' noggin. Tick-tock.

Soon my face will be on every magazine
and then my voice will be on every frequency
take my heart while you're at it
why don't you sign me up to sell me out,
Hard core superstar by far you're the ultimate star,
Hard core superstar by far, you're the ultimate star,
Do you wanna be a superstar?
Do you wanna be a superstar?
I am my angel 'til death I do
I saw my first angel and it was you.
-Tegan & Sara, "Superstar"

Oh, you know what. False alarm. One more question:

---

0. Does Anyone Feel that "Serving Size" is an adequate serving?

I know why serving sizes are oriented as they are, obvs, as my mother was a professional Nutritionist and I know way more about food, nutrition, the food pyramid, calories, diets, carbohydrates, food groups, vitamins, low-fat cooking etc., than I ought to, but I feel like the word "serving" is misleading, and it annoys me when the lady & fitness mags try to "remind" you how big a serving size is, as if that's the source of your dietary issues--going over a palm-sized amount of chicken -- as if that's actually an adequate amount of food for anyone over the age of 8 months to consume. Also, I think I use too much coffee, because I seem to go through a bag of coffee and a thing of creamer in like, three days, and I only make coffee in the morning, the rest of the day I go to D2. That's all, fo'real.

Seriously. Srsly.

Sunday Top Ten, Part Two: You Got Some More Deep Inside Of You

So I thought it'd be super-awesome to not write my story for the reading until two days beforehand. It's still in various states of terribleness. I need a job where there's no such thing as "the last minute." I guess that would be an astrophysicist or a prophet or something.

I might try to make this post better than it is within the next 24 hours, or else delete this sentence. I really need to work on my issues with committing to first drafts.

This post is the result of a mind that's pretty certain it's out of words. I'm only awake to write this because my roommate's passport is in her storage unit in Queens and her flight for Toronto [a city in Canada, her homeland] leaves in two hours, so it's like, Full Fledged Crisis in our apartment at present. I told her she's probs not supposed to be on the flight if she doesn't make it, like it's fate.

Starr: Do you think there's any way I could get into my storage unit, even though it's closed?
Me: You mean like, Jedi shit?

See how helpful I am in a crisis? Very.

SUNDAY TOP TEN, PART TWO, ITEMS 7-1
DREAM JOBS if salary, time, qualifications and
history were no object.

7. Haviland's Special Spot - Dream Job: Hairstylist

This week I am giving Haviland one special spot on my Top Ten for her dream job, which she just discovered recently.

Me: "Today I kept wanting to cut off all my hair."
Haviland: "Ooooo can I do it?"
Me: "Right now?"
Haviland: "Yeah! But I've never cut anyone's hair before and don't have the right scissors."
Me: "Um, okay. I guess no one's gonna see it anyhow besides my PhotoBooth and like, Zoey and Starr."
Haviland: "Yayyy! This is gonna be soooo much fun!"

Haviland's now decided she's destined for hairstyling, and I gotta say, she did quite a job using purple scissors designed for the elementary school classroom, I don't even need to get it fixed by a pro. I like it. Once I cut my own hair when I was 15, otherwise I probs woulda been more nervous. But what I learned from that experience was: hair grows back.

---

And now for a quick interlude. It'd seem that most of my ideas about "the workplace" have come from movies about record stores. Today's introductory thought comes from "Empire Records": Warren shoplifts a bunch of records and gets caught by Lucas.

Warren: You're psycho. You are psycho. What the hell is wrong with you people? You all belong in the loony bin. Every one of ya. Forget you guys, I don't need you. You think you're so good and damn great 'cause you work in a freakin' record store. You think you're so superior! Hey, Joe, Lucas steals nine grand from you and you don't do dick to him? So you gonna give me a job now?
Berko: So that's it, Warren? You wanna work in a record store?
Warren: No.
Lucas: I think you're lying, Warren.
Warren: He's not gonna give me a job, man.
Lucas: How do you know?
Warren: Why should he? Why should anyone give me a job?
Lucas: He gave me a job.
[police sirens are approaching]
Warren [to Joe]: So, do I get the job?
[cut to back room where AJ is making Warren a store ID tag]

I think about that part a lot, when he goes, "So that's it, Warren? You wanna work in a record store?" Like he goes in there and robs it and makes fun of it, but the truth is, he just wants to be a member of their dynamic team.

I imagine this happening to me too. One day Ilene Chaiken will burst onto the scene with: "So, that's it, Marie? You want to work for The L Word?" [6]. Another day, Shaquisha from Duane Reade will offer: "So, that's it, Marie? You want to work at Duane Reade?" [5] and my answer to both of those questions would be 'YES!" Here's why:
a) I think I could make "The L Word" even better than it already is. I know, I know: you find that hard to believe. Well, I've thought of a few things and I'm prepared to go down on whomever I have to to make this happen, except EZ Girl.
b) I really don't think the lines have to be that long. They just need to rearrange their floor plan to have less people on "standing around doing jackshit" duty and more people on "register." Like I would be the head cashier at the Duane Reade everyone wanted to go to on account of our speedy service.

---

4. Personal Trainer

I'm not very good at lifting. I just wanna get paid to go to the gym and be in super-good shape. "This is how you do 'quick start' on the elliptical trainer, obvs.'" Like that. If they were like "How do you get abs of steel?" I'd be like "I dunno, ask that guy."

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3. America's Next Top Model

OK so what if you went on this show, and in the beginning, you were totes like, going with the flow ...

First, Tyra walks in the room: you burst into tears.

They prod for your life story, you offer up: "Every day I got beat up/robbed, Mammy & Pappy burned to death in the fire, then I found out I had cancer and beat cancer and had a baby, got my college degree and got hit by a car, I made all my limbs out of trees and built my own clothes from the skins of animals 'cause we so poor, we eatin' ketchup packets like they're tomato soup, or Ramen every day like Riese."

You get into the house, you fight with everyone like "I love Jesus!" or like "I hate Jesus!" or whatever'll have the best effect.

You make out with some straight girls.

So then once you're IN, you start revolting quietly ...

Like you're NOT gonna freak out about the Tyra Mail, you're just gonna be like: "Oh, what's up, it's the mail."

And at your makeover, you're like "Whatevs, it's a free haircut bitches!"

And when they ask you to hang from a building in a bikini while wild animals try to rip your skin off with their claws in the rain because that's what happens in high fashion, you're like "Awesome, that's what I do for fun! Bring on the tigers!" You know?

You just revolt against all attempts to transform you into someone who goes "OMG TYRA!" Like the anti-Natasha? That'd be pretty awesome, I think.

Howevs, if Miss Jay were looking at me right now, he'd say: "Girl, put DOWN the popcorn. You do not need that."

I'm watching the first episode right now and Tyra, Miss Jay and Jay Manuel just recommended one girl receive "a good ol' high fashion ass-whoopin'!" Are any of these girls lesbians is what I want to know? If they go another season without a lez, I'm gonna start a letter writing campaign. They're lucky I still watch it now after they kicked off Kim. Did you guys watch tonight? Tonight was the first night I've watched teevee without intent to recap in months. I watched "Gossip Girl" too. [Side note: still have no story, story I still have is bad.] I did other things at the same time, like write this brill blog entry.

Who were your favorite Top Model contestants ever? Wanna know mine? Okay!
1. Lisa D'Amato, Cycle 5
2. Dionne Walters, Cycle 8
3. Kim Stolz, Cycle 5
4. Brittany Brower, Cycle 4
5. Elyse Sewell, Cycle 1

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2. A Dairy Queen Worker

Dairy Queen was the only place in town that would employ 14-year-olds, it seemed like everyone worked at the Packard Dairy Queen. We'd walk there, get free Blizzards with every kind of candy on earth stuffed inside it. I felt like all the paying customers were big suckers. One summer the Packard Dairy Queen ended up losing money. Then, later in life I started dating the best friend of the son of the Dairy Queen's owner, and then it was like, wow, this is the guy we stole all that ice cream from. Not like I brought it up or anything, but it was just weird, I mean, not like his son didn't give us free ice cream all the time too. I could go for a Blizzard right now.

---

1. TeeVee Writer Obvs

There's this sitcom called "Living it Out ..."

---

I just thought of more I'm going to start counting back up again. OK? Okay.

1. A Rock Star: I think I mentioned this last time. Get to meet other rock stars, party all night, have groupies, wear cute clothes, make political statements, design handbags, have extra money to give to people who actually need it.
2. A Taste Tester for French Fries: Because I really love french fries, so it's a cause I believe in, I also have a good mental database of other french fries.
3. Therapist: I feel like most therapists are secretly really fucked up, but they're good at telling other people what to do and they're usually right when they do. Like meeeeee!
4. One of Those Office Jobs: where you sit at a desk all day, getting paid to do your own shit and being ignored and not doing real work. Whatever job it is that enables most bloggers and their readers, I want one of those.
5. A Movie Star: I would have a lot of money, and then I could buy my Mom a castle.
6. Hat Tester: Most hats are too small for my big head. So if I could get involved in the process a little before the "retail" stage, maybe I could change that. I'd like to do the same thing for shoes, make them larger but with shorter heels. I bet I could get it plugged on America's Next Top Model.
7. An Ex-cast member of "The Real World" so I could be on the challenges where you get to play the games in the outdoors. I'd be like "no more drama, bitches."
8. Personal Assistant to Shane for Wax: Shane is a hairstylist at West Hollywood's hottest hair salon, Wax.
9. Pharmacist: Then I could have access to all kinds of fun things I could sell on craigslist. If you go to "Wanted" there are all these people all the time trying to get their hands on some painkillers, there are some real sob stories on there. Don't ask me why I'm obsessed with the craigslist "items 'wanted' section, I just am.
10. Interview Subject: I like to talk about myself and I can talk about a lot of topics. Try me.
11. Drug Dealer: Because then I'd have a lot of bling and could buy my Mom a boat for the river outside her cottage.
12. Philanthropist: I think first I need to have another job where I make a lot of money to give away, but if I could skip that part and go straight to where I pick charities to give money to, that would be hot.
13. Copywrite for "smartwater": Seriously all of their copy is retarded. "Is it just us or do clouds get a bad rap?" Um, ew, whatever. It's totally just you.
14. Entrepreneur: I have a lot of really good business ideas, I just need some financial backing. Seriously I'm like a walking talking invention convention.

Sunday Top Ten: I Used to Be Free of Spirit, Now I'm Just Free of Sleep

You'd Think With All I Oughta Be Doing Right Now, This Would be a Thursday Top Two ...

I composed this week's top ten via a series of 3-5 minute intervals peppered throughout my lovely weekend of insane teevee show-related work -- each interval concluded when the guilt grew too strong to bear. What follows is the result of that process. You can imagine it'll be like listening to Guns 'N Roses sing "November Rain" over the course of an entire weekend via 3-5 second clips. Why "November Rain"? Because it's a super-long song. I was in 6th grade at the height of its popularity, and recall vividly the agony over selecting a proper partner for this particular slow-dance [read: I didn't really have a choice, beggars can't be choosers]. "This Used to Be My Playground" was another long one. If you got stuck with a boy who already had a boner, you were really in for it. Not literally, obvs, I went to gifted kids school, we were too nervous and special to actually be "in for" anything. What was my point? Oh yeah, I didn't have one.

Saturday, September 8th. 1:00 A.M.:
I've been staring at Page 1 of Webisode #1 since 12:14, which's when I finished another thirty-minute task that somehow took two hours. I say 'somehow' as if this isn't a pattern I've repeated every time I've done anything, ever.

That's a good lead in to this week's Sunday Top Ten topic, because it's about things I'm bad at [e.g., my continual/endearing underestimation of the amount of time required to complete any given task.]

Saturday, September 8th. 1:15 A.M.:
Zoey just told me whatever I'm doing with my hair, it totally works, and I should become a stylist like Shane. WHEEEEE!!!! Har. I'll call my Salon "Shane," or whatever it is that Cherie Jaffee was going to call the salon that she was opening for Shane before our lives -- in mean, their lives-- fell to pieces.

SUNDAY TOP TEN: Things I Just Cannot Do

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Saturday, Sep. 8th. 2:00 A.M:

10. Simple Tasks Around the Office
(I don't know what it is specifically I'm bad at,
but somehow I suck at all jobs that other people are able to do
effectively, efficiently, and dynamically)

I have one freelance job where I write recruitment ads. I'm pretty good at this. It involves describing qualities desirable in applicants that I myself do not possess. I think about this when I'm temping: "this would be an ideal position for a motivated and solution-oriented administrative professional with a desire to develop career skills in a dynamic multi-faceted work environment ... not me." Howevs, I got computer skills and that attention-to-detail thing. I'll attend to details until my eyes turn into goldfish and my fingers fall off, seriously.

Last Tuesday, I dashed from the headquarters of Global Wealth Management at a Big Important Bank at 5:30 ON THE DOT, like "GTG film, latez!" after totally rescheduling some super-important world hooha blabla meeting without checking to see if it was okay with the person who'd arranged it in the first place. [In my defense, I did check with my direct supervisor, and it was his meeting, too, get your shit together, mister!] I felt like everyone was mad at me and subsequently thought: "Maybe this's because I look like Danny Partridge today, and they probs had an unrequited crush on him back in the stone age when they were children." The women were talking about internet dating and I was pulling out what hair I hadn't already cut off.

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9. Understand the Rules of Football

I've got a lot of complicated Rules of Living, like "Riese's Rules For Meat-Eating" [I'm talking about actual dead-animal meat, not "meat," get your head out of the gutter] [or maybe that's just my head?] One of those sets of Rules is "Riese's Rules For Sports." They include:
1. I should be able to imagine the sport being played by Native Americans. Like, it should seem like something you could do with sticks and deerskin.
1a. Therefore, no complicated things like ice rinks [I realise ice rinks used to form naturally from lakes in the wintertime, but you know what I mean, yeah? No like, complicated whatzits like they have in hockey] or complicated equipment like in croquet.
1b. Or complicated rules, like in FOOTBALL. They're all stop and start. That's lame, it's like, I wouldn't accept that in a sexual partner, why would I accept that in a sporting event?
2. I would like to see the player's actual faces. Faces matter to me. I'm a people person.
3. Clearly you can see that basketball is the best sport ever, according to those rules.

---

Sat. September 8th, 2:36 A.M.

OH MY FUCKING G-D FINAL DRAFT JUST ERASED EVERY OUNCE OF WORK I'VE DONE SINCE YESTERDAY AT 7:30 P.M. AS I WRITE THIS LINE, IT IS 2:36 AM ON SATURDAY. I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON IT, ON AND OFF, SINCE THEN. I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS I AM GOING TO SCREAM.

REALLY PAPI?!!

SIGH.

---

Sat. September 8th, 2:46 A.M.

8.Do Nothing and/or Sit Still

I like to fill every moment of every day with as much activity as possible, even the parts where I am sitting still. I don't sit still; I shake, rattle and roll. I like to multi-task, just not necessarily efficiently, and just not boring stuff, like "9" or "10."

---

"The only thing was, when I tried to picture myself in some job, briskly jotting down line after line of shorthand, my mind went blank. There wasn't one job I felt like doing where you used shorthand. And, as I sat there and watched, the white chalk curlicues blurred into senselessness."
(Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar)

---

7. Dance

That's my hero, Shirley Temple.

Most boys can't dance, but I'd somehow manage to date the few that could, and obvs all girls can dance so I've generally dated good dancers. [Also, I tend to date musicians of some sort, so there's that.] I cannot dance. That's right. As I just said, most girls CAN dance, but I'm not most girls. I'm trying to tell you that I am actually a Superhero. That's right. I'm going to go back in time and retrieve my doc, then I'm going to do a little dance about it, inspired partially by my document recovery and partially by the flight of a butterfly who flaps his wings in China. Once I had a boyfriend who was trained in ballet, jazz, modern, tap, etc. No, he wasn't gay, btw.

---

Sat. September 8th, 11:22 P.M.

6. Shut Up

Hi. Back. Carly thinks I'm writing a Webisode right now, but I'm playing hooky to do this for a minute, because my brain hurts. Guess what? My back hurts too and I know why: it's FROM SITTING IN THIS CHAIR ALL THE TIME!

Re: this chair, which is clearly killing me softly ... once upon a time, back in the June of my discontent, I wrote a comment on a blog entry, that went as follows: "My girlfriend just told me that I've lost my mind because I super-glued a Jack Kerouac postcard to my desk. The only reason I did that is cause I opened the super glue bottle to try to super glue my "T" key to my keyboard, which obvs did not work, and now it's just balanced just So, and then the super glue thing wouldn't open, so I had to cut it open, and then it leaked on the desk, and then It was getting everywhere, so I had to put something on top of it, so I put this postcard on top of it and now it's stuck there forever. That's okay. I got this desk for free from a whorehouse, 'cause the owner was getting a new desk from IKEA and putting her old desk out on the street."

Anyhow, that explains the chair!

Obvs [redacated] was projecting. I'd not lost my mind, I'd caught second-hand madness. I'm not mentioning this for any other reason than its extreme relevance, re: my chair. Also, I thought that comment was brill, at the time, and every time she re-read it out loud to me to really display it's apparent off-the-wall-ed-ness, I laughed more, harder than I'd laughed in centuries. I was laughing so hard my whole body hurt. Also, I figured that comment could double as a "cry for help." Oh well.

Don't cry out, cease fire, ten nine eight and i'm breaking away, I'm all dressed up and I'm ready to play, seven six five four and I'm all over you, counting three two one I'm having fun, your fascination with naked walls of silk and skin with no conditions, I needed you to notice ... that's all I wanted ... (shiny toy guns)

---

Sat, Sep. 8th. 11:55 P.M.

5. Pluck My Eyebrows

It makes me sneeze. Weird, right? That's why I have to get them waxed, which does NOT make me sneeze. I try to go every three weeks, so that no one's too horrified when they look at me. But now I have bangs instead.

---

4. Shmooze

I just think it's silly when people pretend to be what they aren't for the purpose of business. This is why I do not succeed at non-arts-related business. I believe in "keeping it real," and unfortunately, the "real me" swears like a sailor, makes multiple references to her own insanity, apparently does this weird mouth-teeth-lip-licking thing all the time (I just saw this on video), drinks like Eddie and Patsy, and also I can't seem to get up from a chair without like, fully LAUNCHING out of the chair like I'm a torpedo or something (also, the video). Also, why is my stomach growling again? I swear, I've had already 50 meals today. I must be pregnant. I'm a miracle of science, I should write a Guestbian column about this. I will NEVER get a six-pack if I continue to give in to my body's demands. Like: "feed me!" I fed you already! Jeez. You're like a dog or something.

Oh anyhow, I've gotten way better at this lately, for the purposes of promoting our teevee show. I think that's because it's not pretending. I really do believe in it.

---

1:30 A.M. Sunday. 9.10

3.Bench Press

That's right, I can't even lift the bar. Look at my muscles.

---

4:15 P.M. Sunday, 9.10
Here I am Again! Now Carly is here, in my room, asleep. Oh! She's awake now. We're doing work. I just did SOOOO much work over the last three hours, I need a break. Whew.

We're on the edge/verge. We had a brunch meeting this morning for some reason at the asscrack of dawn [9 A.M.] at L'Express, I feel like death. I was also clearly late. Carly hadn't slept yet at that point, which is why she was just asleep earlier, when I said "Carly is asleep."

The following members of our stellar production team were in attendance: Haviland, Jessica, Caitlin, Cait, Cesar, Heather and, obvs, Carly & MEEEEEE (Riese!). Wow, that's like, a lot of Cs. I wonder what that means. I hope it doesn't mean we're average. I hope it means we're Certifiable.

---

11: 25 P.M. Sunday, 9.10

2. Stay on Task

I am bouncing off the walls. I would like to run around the block. Unfortunately street harassment is really intense in general and it GETS TO ME. Starr, my temporary roommate who just moved in, commented on this as well--she's never experienced such ridic cat-calling nonsense as she does right here. I just DON'T UNDERSTAND THE POINT.

I just went to the corner store to get a Gatorade XTremo, Coca-Cola and Grapefruit Juice, and was cajoled by four different people.

I have a new plan: I'm just gonna cut off all my hair. Then people will think I'm a boy, and if they try to harass me, I'll be like "I'm a boy, fuck off." And then if they try to mess with me, I'll be like "Listen up: I am a boy and can crush you with my hands."

My eyes are sunk so far into my skull, I'm not sure they are actually "eyes" anymore. I feel like that guy in the MTV promos who drove taxis and had greasy hair. Remember him? MTV used to be so much better than it is now, yeah? OMG I wonder what happened with Britney tonight on the VMAS!?

Whoah. I just watched like three minutes of that, and my computer battery drained 50%. Why does she look so dead in the eyes? Where have you gone, my sweet Britney Spears?

Oh right.

---

1. Play Volleyball

I can do most other sports. Just not volleyball. I wish I could though. It looks fun.

I searched for women's beach volleyball pictures and this was the first thing to come up. I felt like it was fate, maybe.

Q: Riese, go to sleep.
A: OK.

Bring it Up, and Bring it In, And We'll Get You Fixed Up in No Time

**
i. And The Closet's Been Shaking With Bones

So I wrote this post here, then removed it 'cause I thought it was sort of whiny. I stated, re: my intention to write a new one: "If the old post was a petulant screaming child on a streetcorner, dripping popsicle onto his or her terrycloth separates, then the new post will be that same child the next morning in a cooler outfit not spilling anything. Perhaps this child'll be eating something more user-friendly, like a little cup of Tasti-D." There's a lot of problems with that analogy, clearly. Like that it's not true.

Yesterday was an amazing morning and I'm hoping that there'll be many more mornings just like it in the future, and then I'll just post pictures of sunshine and ice cream, like Cute Overload. Ha, just kidding, you can't take pictures of sunshine.

Also, Lozo and I are going to consolidate our blogs into one blog. What do you think? We're pretty much the same person, except different. I'm gonna learn the rules of football. Gmail Adsense might freak out over this idea: "L Word Ringtones! Yankees tickets! Get Over Your Ex! Hookers! COFFEE EXPOSED! Get bigger muscles! Meet lesbians!"

JK. (Kinda)

[Due to my erasure of the previous post, not to be confused with the band "Erasure," some comments might not make sense right now. It's mysterious, like Unsolved Mysteries, one of the best teevee programs of all time. Have you ever drank Sugar-Free Red Bull? I'm drinking some right now. It tastes like liquid hellfire.]

**
ii. You're Still In My Blood:

First graf, old blog: I would undertake a number of death-defying life-threatening actions right now in exchange for a back massage. I'd even undertake a girlfriend for that purpose. I've taken like, eight Bayer Back & Body Pain, and my back is still in pain. Why? I don't know. Something that happened during the half-minute/5.5 hours I was actually comatose last night.

[South of Nowhere Recap Here]

***
iii. Time, You've Got Me Running

This Friday night felt like college; strung out and fading then coming back strong then losing it then wondering if we had anything left in us and then going over it and then coasting and then crashing, leaving pages of accomplishment and emptied Red Bull cans in our wake. But we've targeted the ways in which it's unlike college, and the main one is that we're not going for a grade. Everything now is pass/fail ... you either get the job or you don't, you publish the article or you don't ... and this week is turning out to be one of the most challenging in terms of hours-to-work ratio that I've had in a long time.

I often wished I could grade query letters at the lit agency: "You're a great writer, this just won't sell, B+!" instead of giving out 1,000 rejection letters, 3 "let's take a look at the first 50 pages and then reject you" letters and one "send the whole thing, this might actually be awesome" letters.

My room is in an absolute state and I'm running out of cute underwear. Luckily, my not-cute underwear is still cuter than most people's underwear. My starred emails (star=Reply!) are sinking into Page 2 of my inbox, a.k.a. the no-reply zone. I don't think I've communicated with an extended family member in like, months. Apparently my cousin's given birth, and my other cousin's wife is about to give birth. Who knew? Probs most people but not me.

***
iv. Cute Overload

Wednesday!! We filmed some stuff for a thing that might lead to some better stuff. Look:

Converting To Digital

Let me feel your heart beat

You say potato, I say potato

High Kick

Just try it on!

Key Gripper

OMG Are We Really Doing This?
Let's do this every day, forever and ever,
except let's not wake up at 6 A.M the next time.

Hi Mom!

LOLLLLLLLLL


v. The Thunder and the Laughter

Back on the roof. Last week, Carly and I, seeking new perspective, held a meeting up here: as soon as we got up here, though, I realised I'd let the door close behind us [not the first time I've locked myself on the roof, obvs]. I wanted to crawl down that death-space between the buildings and try kicking in our bathroom window but Carly said she'd freak out if I did that, so I settled to climb the fire escape down to our kitchen window and remove the screen door and crawl in like a SWAT team. I felt slightly like MacGyver but also just slightly like a babysitter who'd just locked the kids out of the house, which I think I've mentioned I did once. Oddly enough, babysitting was one of the jobs I was best at of the myriad of occupations I've attempted over the years. I have a lot in common with toddlers.

Anyhow so last week, near the end of our totes productive re-evaluation of direction meeting, this guy came up to the roof wearing a Wal-Mart style vest and he talked to us for about 15 minutes about why we shouldn't walk around on the roof. Something about the rain and how we'd fall through and die. We couldn't understand a word he said, his English was pretty bad, so mostly we concentrated on not looking at each other, lest we start cracking up, which would indicate right away that we didn't really intend to take his advice. I like to live on the edge, obvs. OF THE ROOF! JK. Remember this?:

Speaking of not sleeping: I slept for EIGHT HOURS LAST NIGHT. EIGHT!! (!!!)

Now I'm going to summarize my old post for you, which's good practice for me, 'cause I'm supposed to be summarizing our pilot right now. I have troubles with brevity [surprise!].

The post that was here before covered the following areas:

1. My inexplicable back pain, for which I tried a few remedies, including a pill Pharmer.org identified as Robaxin (left over from when I slipped on the ice in 2003 and tried to go to work anyhow but I was bleeding through my shirt and couldn't walk, so my manager was like "Urm, go home weirdo,"), about ten Advil, marajuana, some Bayer, spaghetti, moaning, more moaning, and additional moaning. I mentioned that I'd like some Percocet, which I've never taken but I imagine must be good because it's addictive, and then Zoey (my roommate) came to my room with a Vicodin, which I'm still saving because I think the back pain is returning right now as I sit here on the roof.

2. Things that I don't do when time's tight, including returning/placing phone calls, laundry, socialising, MySpace, going to therapy and sleeping.

3. Things I still do when time's tight, which include going to the gym (didn't go today though!), eating too much food, emailing Crystal, and writing my blog.

4. I not-preached to the not-choir, which I acknowledged I do often, as Mr.Duane Reade, G.W Bush and Ilene Chaiken also do not read my blog, yet I continue to call out to them like a ghost in the night who is screaming a lot.

Sometimes, when I've been out of touch for too long, my close friends protest reading my blog on the grounds that it's not a substitute for speaking to me. I then explained why I think that's retarded, in summary:
4a. If you read it, that's less backstory I've gotta provide when we finally do talk, thus increasing the amount of you-time. 'Cause I love you and want to know about you, obvs.
4b. It stresses me out to talk to The Protesters, because I get overwhelmed thinking about all the stuff I've gotta go over that I've already discussed at far too much length already right here. There's plenty of private stuff left over to talk about, obvs, this is just a good starter.
4c. It's my writing, it's a big part of my life, and it matters to me, so I find it kinda hurtful when you don't. (I didn't actually say that, but it was implied by my caustic and abrasive sarcasm.) Maybe it does feel weird to be an intimate friend of mine and read something accessible by people that don't know me like you do, but even though it's called a "blog," I spend time on it, and it matters to me.

From SIX FEET UNDER, the best show ever to be on the TeeVee:

Nate: Why do you treat me like shit all the time?
Brenda: Because I had a really fucked up life, and I use sarcasm to hide how ridiculously vulnerable I really am, okay? C'mon, Jesus, you know that.

***
vi. We'll Get You Fixed Up in No Time

I'm sure you're all on the edge of your proverbial seats regarding my back pain. Soooo ... last night I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill, which was bad idea Numero Uno. In my defense, I needed a brainstorming session and I can think really well when I run, and "Top Model" was on. In my offense, I ran for eight minutes. The rest of the time I spent on less demanding pieces of equipment, then got annoyed that it was so crowded (I'm used to the afternoon lull) and went right back home. Then I moaned for about five consecutive hours.

We have a subletter right now named Star, because Ryan is opening a show in Seattle. Because she's only here for a month, I can whine alot w/o worrying she'll worry that I might get annoying in the long term, and she still finds it endearing or at least pretends to. Also, she told me today that she DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A BLOG IS! So, there's that. What was the point of that? Oh yeah, she listened to me moan last night.

So, today: there's this place on 81st called Super Magic Fingers, and NO, that's not Haviland's uptown hideaway. [I love all the places in NYC with ridiculous names. You wonder why it is that nowhere along the "business creation" process did someone say: "Hey, P.S., 'No Pork Kitchen' is a stupid name or 'NO EFFIN APOSTROPHE'" or whathaveyou.] It's like, good massage place and it's cheap, and they fixed my back. Howevs, here I am on the roof, sitting with world's worst posture, thinking: Fuck. It hurts again. Also I just smoked like, 10 cigarettes in a row, and I don't smoke. Clearly I enjoy digging my own grave.

I think I saw your airplane in the sky tonight, through the window lying on the kitchen floor.

vii. Also ...

This is Uh Huh Her, which Roy amazingly called "Mmm Hmmm Her" and Natalie called "Uh Oh Her":

"You say that you're broken,
I just wanna fix you.
Tell me what to do
baby I will listen
Days will go unwritten
All the things you're missing,
tell me what to do,
baby I can fix it."

-Uh Huh Her

Last week we saw them and then talked to Leisha Hailey. Also last week, Stef took Carly and I to see Northern State and they were also amazing. I've met a lot of blog people in real life lately. I guess that means it's almost time for Lozo and I to go to a strip club. First I just need to finish this stuff.