Well, we're back in New York City, and it sure is cold (also, boy are my arms tired!). I'm still in denial that we're no longer in Key Bisquane, which's one of many reasons I've yet to unpack. The other reasons include being very busy.
I hope you're ready to set aside approximately six minutes and thirty seconds to have your world rocked to the core by the first installment of the video blog we made in our hotel room at about 2 A.M. last week sometime. If you've ever dated a 16-year-old boy, you're probs familiar with that kind of experience. That's the kind of sentence that someone may suggest I delete if I ever want to be a successful human being.
There'll be a Tuesday Top Eight/Sunday Top Ten/Wednesday Top Wow dropping in your universe shortly. Also, I got a tattoo on my wrist, more on that later.
This video includes the following topics: leaving myspace (again), vacation/Miami, the Allegory of the Cave, the nineties, and this really funny thing that happened when we went to the elevator. If you look at the reflections in the sliding glass door, you can see Semicolon/Alex and Cait vibrating with laughter and amusement.
A soundtrack listing can be found here at Auto-Universe,. along with the soundtracks for Vlogs 13, 14, 15 and 16!
Showing posts with label myspace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label myspace. Show all posts
Monday, January 28, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
We're Going to VLOG Miami ... Really Soon.
Hola! Welcome. Here we are in Sunny Florida! Actually, it's a little windy right now, but it was windy and sunny all day. Haviland is singing from The Golden Girls. We filmed some vlog so I made a preview, you can watch it below to whet your appetite for the real thing. A lot of amazing things happened today, like we've started communicating telepathically with the hotel people so they bring us things we don't ask for. Also I'm never coming home 'cause it's beautiful sunny and it's cold in New York. (I know! Crazytown! I hate the sunshine! Not as much as I hate waterparks and strangers, but it's hate just the same. Sunshine's a lot better with palm trees, p.s.) If I was reading this right now I would hate me. Actually, I'm writing this right now, and I kinda hate me. But y'know, I'm used to having that kind of relationship with myself, ideally you find it endearing, like the Golden Girls.
Also we had a big talk about the internet this evening and Haviland gave me permission to delete my myspace profile, which I've wanted to do pretty much since I put it back up after deleting it the first time. I'm not going crazy or dead, I just truly loathe myspace -- it makes my head explode, random dudes are still asking me for threesomes, and I never check it and therefore always feel like an asshole when I do check it.
I feel weird obvs about losing my comments and other things from my friends ... but today I was working on my book -- digging through a lot of old docs on my computer, and even stuff from last year I don't remember writing -- and I realised that I have approximately every other important minute of my life documented (been keeping daily diary since I was about two, and writing it all down on my computer in detail for about fifteen years) and so if I allow a bunch of myspace stuff to disappear into the great cyberbeyond sans backup or recording ... well, that's perhaps good for me. I can't keep holding on to things just by writing them down. I can only really hold onto things by grabbing things like a tiger and pouncing. Rawr!
Here's our preview. The real thing is gonna be even more awesome, if such a thing is possible. If it was, I might call it "awesomer."
Also we had a big talk about the internet this evening and Haviland gave me permission to delete my myspace profile, which I've wanted to do pretty much since I put it back up after deleting it the first time. I'm not going crazy or dead, I just truly loathe myspace -- it makes my head explode, random dudes are still asking me for threesomes, and I never check it and therefore always feel like an asshole when I do check it.
I feel weird obvs about losing my comments and other things from my friends ... but today I was working on my book -- digging through a lot of old docs on my computer, and even stuff from last year I don't remember writing -- and I realised that I have approximately every other important minute of my life documented (been keeping daily diary since I was about two, and writing it all down on my computer in detail for about fifteen years) and so if I allow a bunch of myspace stuff to disappear into the great cyberbeyond sans backup or recording ... well, that's perhaps good for me. I can't keep holding on to things just by writing them down. I can only really hold onto things by grabbing things like a tiger and pouncing. Rawr!
Here's our preview. The real thing is gonna be even more awesome, if such a thing is possible. If it was, I might call it "awesomer."
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Great Mysteries of Life Ctd.: Oh And I'm Feeling Directionless Yes But That's To Be Expected
Speaking of great mysteries in life I don't understand, the cashier at the Fredrick Douglass Avenue Dunkin' Donuts -- who, in case you're wondering, and I think you are, sported an unzipped fly, appeared approximately 100 years old and was possibly drunk [he smelled strongly of something sweet and rotten] -- just requested ID when I paid for my iced coffee with a gift card. This has never happened before, and if it had, I would have been similarly confused/suspicious about Big Brother.
Crystal's Great Mysteries:
Re: Why does the fire alarm in my building only go off on certain floors? Like, surely you'd evacuate the whole building.
It's natural selection, I think. Probs they get rid of the people who use their powers for evil instead of good.
Re: Why won't Qantas fly me from Vegas to New York?
Why won't Qantas fly me everywhere? If they flew me everywhere, I wouldn't be afraid of planes.
Re: Why, after years of continual typing, am I still a retardedly slow typer?
That is weird.
Re: Why do people keep calling my phone even when I never answer?
I could not possibly "totes" this answer more than I already do. TOTES. I wish I knew, but I think it has something to do with bills and a dead body.
Re: Why do people always try to talk to me when I'm trying to enjoy a cigarette?
People are annoying and weird and assume people would rather talk than do just about anything else there is, that's why we've created g-chat and such, so that we can be chatting all the time with other humans. I don't know I think it's because people don't know how to deal with being needy. That's a long answer. I wish people wouldn't try to talk to me when I'm trying to enjoy a book or an ipod or a fake usage of phone.
Lozo's Great Mysteries:
Re: Why do girls care so much about eyelashes? Thickness? Length? Eyelashes aren't penises. Are they?
I think there's a subtle effect of mascara that you're failing to notice. Also they are penises. That's how gay people do it. Like butterflies.
Re: Why are there signs on the highway that say, "speed checked by radar"? What the fuck else would you check it with? Is that supposed to scare me into slowing down?
I realise I've literally always assumed there was some other method I just hadn't noticed before. Like, "Oh, by radar, cool, not that other thing, totes." 'Cause otherwise that'd be totes retarded, which clearly they are. Maybe it's because of radar guns.
Re: Why do they put cereal in boxes? They put chips in bags, can't they put Cheerios in bags?
This convo led to me discovering Lozo cares about the rainforest, it was strange.
Lainy's Great Mysteries:
Re: Why do I keep smoking even though it makes me feel like shit and I know it's killing me?
I feel like I can describe most of my life's activities as things that make me feel like shit, things that're killing me. There must be a patch for this or something, a different way to get the same drug, a change in method.
Re: Why do I break electronics so easily?
I tell myself that it's not me, it's the electronics. Headphones are the new crack.
Re: Why do I say the most inappropriate things to the most inappropriate people but with people I care about I oftentimes am shy?
It's what's at stake.
Re: Why do I like to stay up late even though I enjoy the morning?
I was just asking myself the same question. Maybe we really like all the parts of the day, every single hour, all of it, all of it, the hours, the hours.
*
And now ... My Great Mysteries!
What happens on my street every morning at 8:21 A.M.?
It's like a honkers convention, where all the cars in the city drive to my street and make sure their horns are working properly. Like, let's test them out doing a variety of long beeps and short beeps, all at once, good, again. That sound has awoken me from slumber for the past three days, it's unbearable, though it gets me out of bed early. But first I lie there, half-asleep and annoyed, fantasising about leaning out my window and dropping large rocks on people. Who knows where thoughts come from, they just appear, they just beep and crash.
*
Am I Hungry?
Sometimes I can answer this. Sometimes, it is pure mystery, because it is a kind of wanting and wanting is mystery.
*
How Did I Just Get Two Bug Bites? WTF? THREE!!
*
Why do people put songs that play automatically on their MySpace profiles?
In what circumstance would I think "Oh, thank G-d for that song that just started auto-playing on top of the music I'm already listening to! Your song and my song together equals the best song I've ever heard." You know? Put a player I can opt into employing, but making "Gimme Gimme" auto-start is not gonna make me give you jackshit, no custody, no nothing woman, no-thing. Not a thing, you hear me? Especially if you've already got a lot of other things going on on your profile. This is why I like facebook better, because myspace makes my computer explode.
*
Also, on the topic of myspace, what the f is up with those ads?
Srsly, any humans who'll cop to exclaiming: "OMG! I totally know the answer to this pop quiz, it's Jennifer Aniston!" and rushing to click the ad or "I know New York's real name! Totes! Free iPod here I come!" I guess you'll need a free laptop after yours melts following the virus that ad clearly leads to. There's an asterik, even, qualifying that the ad won't do what it promises. I thought myspace advertising space was really expensive, so I'd just expect higher standards from it's advertisers.
I guess I don't know the answer to that one. Usually they're pretty obvious. They're clearly targeting a demographic of people who watch that show, which as far as I know, doesn't include very many smart people. Like "Two and a Half Men," if they were like: WHICH OF THE MEN IS ONLY A HALF? I'd be like "DURRR."
*
How do all these terrible television shows get greenlighted?
This upcoming television season, which I know about because I sometimes read retarded magazines and am intrigued by the consistently ridiculous things that happen in the same world that like, invented trees and other really neat things, features many programs that are not necessarily worse than root canals. Like, for example:
-"Carpoolers" -- in which four douchebags sit inside a car driving to work and bitch about their wives. Like, really? That's typically the kind of thing I'd avoid being anywhere near, let alone turning on my television with the express intent to view for 22 minutes.
-"Cavemen" -- Based on those commercials that apparently everyone loved but I found intensely annoying. About what it's like to be an "outsider." You know, as a modern caveman, like Encino Man, great film. It sounds to me a lot like a show about what it's like to look like a douchebag.
-"Life is Wild" -- They advertise during 'Gossip Girl,' it looks like a bunch of douchebags running around in the jungle.
*
Who wants to be on television talk shows or reality dating shows? How could that possibly make life better? [Unless you're America's Next Top Model. Then you can live
your life as a Cover Girl, which is awesome, it covers 85% of lines and has a smooth sheer finish.]
Who says, "OMG, I am so glad I ran around naked on television hitting my ex-husband's wife's lesbian lover's stepdaughter's aunt who's really my transsexual wife with a folding chair, that was so healthy, ever since I got back to Greenbo everyone's been recognising me at the Stop & Shop."
Or: I'd rather not compete with one girl over a girl I like, let alone an entire house-full of people competing for the girl I like.
Sooooo ... guess what?! I've been invited to appear on "The Tyra Banks Show"! I'm guessing they messaged every twentysomething bisexual on MySpace though it's highly possible I was hand-picked because clearly, I'm a shooting star and the camera loves me. The guy explained that they're seeking "a really fun and energetic Bi Woman" to go out with one girl and one guy. Apparently, this is a "social experiment" to "observe the differences between a woman on a date with a woman, and a man on a date with a woman." Really Papi? He's coming right out and admitting that's the point? 'Cause there's no way I'd actively contribute to perpetuating negative and counterproductive stereotypes about bisexuality, although also, I kinda would: I'd hope to trick them, turn it around. But they'd probs find a way to edit out my clever wisdom -- so --- back to no. But also, is this how she recruits girls for ANTM, "We'd like to break you into a million pieces, trap you in a house with a bunch of hyperactive anorexic loons and convince you that developing a signature walk and embodying the spirit of a desert flower or a crime scene is the most important thing you've done your whole goddamn life, then edit you to appear as insane and ugly as possible, and then -- in a matter of months, the entire world can watch your rejection on teevee!"
The financial compensation the Tyra Banks Show offfers is paying for the date. P.S., Tyra, I think you can afford a little more than that. Also, that surprises me, I think they'd be desperately interested in who might pay for dinner, the man on a date with a woman or the woman on a date with a woman. Like, as a social experiment.
Last year, following my appearance in a Marie Claire dating article [I was pictured as the "open minded dater" = laughably false], The Keith Ablow Show, which hadn't yet aired, asked me to come on. Not my thing, but also I was scared it'd be a trick like those shows often are. So I was like "No way, weirdo, I'm not gonna walk into that trap! I'll go out there all proud w/my gender theory, and you'll shove someone from high school who wants me dead in my face, or I'll be sitting next to my grandmother."
I think most gay women in NYC got the Tilla Tequilla casting call -- come live in a mansion with a Maxim model and 13 other hot lesbians, it's the first lesbian dating show ever!--obvs it was a trick.
*
Does anyone really ever get Toxic Shock Syndrome?
I used to be really scared of this when I first read about it.
*
Why does everyone in my neighborhood walk so slow?
I feel like Roadrunner when walking down 125th. I swear, no one else on the street has anywhere to be at all whatsoever like, ever. I just figure, I'm going, I may as well go fast. That's why they call me Flash Gordon.
These are the problems, as I see them:
1. An abundance of strollers and "walkers." I think everyone in this 'hood either has three babies or is almost dead and deaf in both ears. Howevs, I'd like to add that we could all move a lot faster if more people opened doors for strollers and walkers and if more people helped old ladies across the street. Seriously, I feel like I help a lot of lunatics cross 125th, I cannot continue to carry the whole team.
2. A plethora of street salesmen hawking wares including DVDs about the apocalypse and large photographs of Erykah Badu and slave executions and Urban Lit. I support the Urban Lit, but the rest of it can go, except the coffee guy.
3. We just need a greater sense of urgency cultivated in this 'hood, or more space between street-vendors and the street for someone to do the I-live-here-street-walk. Also, perhaps there could be hoverboards like in Back to the Future, I feel like we've totes passed whenever all that stuff was supposed to happen, what crap.
*
Why isn't there a way to search for random word frequency?
Like, I want something to search my documents and tell me if I'm using any particular word too much or more than once. Does this exist? I'm not asking to search for a specific word, I just want it to look at a document and be like "you used the word 'enable' 15 times." "You used totes 500 times." "You talk about Haviland too much."
*
Why am I like, how I am?
I mean, seriously. I guess that's what this blog is about, but also in doing that, I hope to write about why you're like, how you are too. You know? A few months ago we had mice, and Roommate-Ryan put out these no-kill mousetraps that mice can sometimes get out of and asked me You think they'll fall for it, don't they know better by now? They'd just keep going back to the same situation? And I was like, yeah, they would, I mean, you shouldn't ask me, of all people, to say they wouldn't run right in there, all earnest about peanut butter. In the morning, I sometimes lie there for a second wondering if I remember how to breathe, if it's smooth sailing from here on out, cool customer, congruent, catastrophic, sweet like memory and words and hands, my lungs open, I grasp through the dark.
*
What should we Vlog about?
Haviland and I are going to do more vlogs, since it was superfun. Howevs, we need you to tell us what to talk about or ask us questions. This is a Great Mystery of Life, and I want you to help me to understand. See, you help me, we make jokes, and then in China, a butterfly flaps it's wings and saves a village of children, who were hungry but now are not. It's magic. Like Puff. The Magic. Dragon. Sometimes, I wonder, why don't I just write stuff down here that I shouldn't say? Like what is it that creates the decency between my brain and my methods of communicating how my brain is operating? Will it die before I do? I admire it, it is stronger than me, I am grateful it exists. There are so many words I want to say but until I say them, they aren't real. I say a lot of words, so it's the ones I restrain from vocalizing or writing that astound me the most, at the end of the day.
So what should Haviland and I Vlog about? Topics. Email, comment, whatevs. Just throw out a topic if you want to and have one. Any topic or question. We've already used "football" and "blow jobs," so none of that.
*
Me: "Why do you need my ID? That's a gift card."I thought I had like ten million "mysteries of life I don't understand," but I realised upon sitting down to write this that I just had a lot of miscellaneous petty complaints about life's small tragedies that I wanted to complain about to as many people as possible. I asked around to jog my mind, and here's what I got.
Him: "We must always ask for ID in these matters--" [Holds up gift card as if to physically demonstrate the meaning of "these matters," which I guess is "matters of plastic."]
Me: "I mean, I have ID, I just don't understand what you need it for. My name's not on that card, so like, it's not like you need to match me to the gift card. Anyone could use it and it would be legal. It's a gift card."
Him: [looking at the card more closely] "I see." [thinks again] "No, we must always ask for ID in these matters."
Me: "Like, what are you going to prove about my ability to use that gift card by looking at my ID? I have one, I just don't understand the point."
Him: [apparently resigned that I'm not handing over the ID, possibly already thinking about his next drink/masturbation session] "It is just our policy on these matters."
Me: "Well, I really don't get it, so ..."
[Stand-off]
[Stand-off continues. My iced coffee waits for me, untouched, tantalizing and then ...]
[His co-worker/drinking buddy says something to him in another language which I assume translates to "You are wrong, asshat," because my Robert Murdoch-y Cashier resigns and scans my card sans ID. Also, I think I should make a little Dictaphone and just record myself saying "No Sugar," and then I can play it for the goldfish at D2 every day when they ask "No sugar?" and I respond, yes, that's right, "No sugar."]
Crystal's Great Mysteries:
Re: Why does the fire alarm in my building only go off on certain floors? Like, surely you'd evacuate the whole building.
It's natural selection, I think. Probs they get rid of the people who use their powers for evil instead of good.
Re: Why won't Qantas fly me from Vegas to New York?
Why won't Qantas fly me everywhere? If they flew me everywhere, I wouldn't be afraid of planes.
Re: Why, after years of continual typing, am I still a retardedly slow typer?
That is weird.
Re: Why do people keep calling my phone even when I never answer?
I could not possibly "totes" this answer more than I already do. TOTES. I wish I knew, but I think it has something to do with bills and a dead body.
Re: Why do people always try to talk to me when I'm trying to enjoy a cigarette?
People are annoying and weird and assume people would rather talk than do just about anything else there is, that's why we've created g-chat and such, so that we can be chatting all the time with other humans. I don't know I think it's because people don't know how to deal with being needy. That's a long answer. I wish people wouldn't try to talk to me when I'm trying to enjoy a book or an ipod or a fake usage of phone.
Lozo's Great Mysteries:
Re: Why do girls care so much about eyelashes? Thickness? Length? Eyelashes aren't penises. Are they?
I think there's a subtle effect of mascara that you're failing to notice. Also they are penises. That's how gay people do it. Like butterflies.
Re: Why are there signs on the highway that say, "speed checked by radar"? What the fuck else would you check it with? Is that supposed to scare me into slowing down?
I realise I've literally always assumed there was some other method I just hadn't noticed before. Like, "Oh, by radar, cool, not that other thing, totes." 'Cause otherwise that'd be totes retarded, which clearly they are. Maybe it's because of radar guns.
Re: Why do they put cereal in boxes? They put chips in bags, can't they put Cheerios in bags?
This convo led to me discovering Lozo cares about the rainforest, it was strange.
Lainy's Great Mysteries:
Re: Why do I keep smoking even though it makes me feel like shit and I know it's killing me?
I feel like I can describe most of my life's activities as things that make me feel like shit, things that're killing me. There must be a patch for this or something, a different way to get the same drug, a change in method.
Re: Why do I break electronics so easily?
I tell myself that it's not me, it's the electronics. Headphones are the new crack.
Re: Why do I say the most inappropriate things to the most inappropriate people but with people I care about I oftentimes am shy?
It's what's at stake.
Re: Why do I like to stay up late even though I enjoy the morning?
I was just asking myself the same question. Maybe we really like all the parts of the day, every single hour, all of it, all of it, the hours, the hours.
*
And now ... My Great Mysteries!
What happens on my street every morning at 8:21 A.M.?It's like a honkers convention, where all the cars in the city drive to my street and make sure their horns are working properly. Like, let's test them out doing a variety of long beeps and short beeps, all at once, good, again. That sound has awoken me from slumber for the past three days, it's unbearable, though it gets me out of bed early. But first I lie there, half-asleep and annoyed, fantasising about leaning out my window and dropping large rocks on people. Who knows where thoughts come from, they just appear, they just beep and crash.
*
Am I Hungry?
Sometimes I can answer this. Sometimes, it is pure mystery, because it is a kind of wanting and wanting is mystery.
*
How Did I Just Get Two Bug Bites? WTF? THREE!!
*
Why do people put songs that play automatically on their MySpace profiles?
In what circumstance would I think "Oh, thank G-d for that song that just started auto-playing on top of the music I'm already listening to! Your song and my song together equals the best song I've ever heard." You know? Put a player I can opt into employing, but making "Gimme Gimme" auto-start is not gonna make me give you jackshit, no custody, no nothing woman, no-thing. Not a thing, you hear me? Especially if you've already got a lot of other things going on on your profile. This is why I like facebook better, because myspace makes my computer explode.
*
Also, on the topic of myspace, what the f is up with those ads?
Srsly, any humans who'll cop to exclaiming: "OMG! I totally know the answer to this pop quiz, it's Jennifer Aniston!" and rushing to click the ad or "I know New York's real name! Totes! Free iPod here I come!" I guess you'll need a free laptop after yours melts following the virus that ad clearly leads to. There's an asterik, even, qualifying that the ad won't do what it promises. I thought myspace advertising space was really expensive, so I'd just expect higher standards from it's advertisers.
*
How do all these terrible television shows get greenlighted?
This upcoming television season, which I know about because I sometimes read retarded magazines and am intrigued by the consistently ridiculous things that happen in the same world that like, invented trees and other really neat things, features many programs that are not necessarily worse than root canals. Like, for example:
-"Carpoolers" -- in which four douchebags sit inside a car driving to work and bitch about their wives. Like, really? That's typically the kind of thing I'd avoid being anywhere near, let alone turning on my television with the express intent to view for 22 minutes.
-"Cavemen" -- Based on those commercials that apparently everyone loved but I found intensely annoying. About what it's like to be an "outsider." You know, as a modern caveman, like Encino Man, great film. It sounds to me a lot like a show about what it's like to look like a douchebag.
-"Life is Wild" -- They advertise during 'Gossip Girl,' it looks like a bunch of douchebags running around in the jungle.
*
Who wants to be on television talk shows or reality dating shows? How could that possibly make life better? [Unless you're America's Next Top Model. Then you can live
your life as a Cover Girl, which is awesome, it covers 85% of lines and has a smooth sheer finish.]Who says, "OMG, I am so glad I ran around naked on television hitting my ex-husband's wife's lesbian lover's stepdaughter's aunt who's really my transsexual wife with a folding chair, that was so healthy, ever since I got back to Greenbo everyone's been recognising me at the Stop & Shop."
Or: I'd rather not compete with one girl over a girl I like, let alone an entire house-full of people competing for the girl I like.
Sooooo ... guess what?! I've been invited to appear on "The Tyra Banks Show"! I'm guessing they messaged every twentysomething bisexual on MySpace though it's highly possible I was hand-picked because clearly, I'm a shooting star and the camera loves me. The guy explained that they're seeking "a really fun and energetic Bi Woman" to go out with one girl and one guy. Apparently, this is a "social experiment" to "observe the differences between a woman on a date with a woman, and a man on a date with a woman." Really Papi? He's coming right out and admitting that's the point? 'Cause there's no way I'd actively contribute to perpetuating negative and counterproductive stereotypes about bisexuality, although also, I kinda would: I'd hope to trick them, turn it around. But they'd probs find a way to edit out my clever wisdom -- so --- back to no. But also, is this how she recruits girls for ANTM, "We'd like to break you into a million pieces, trap you in a house with a bunch of hyperactive anorexic loons and convince you that developing a signature walk and embodying the spirit of a desert flower or a crime scene is the most important thing you've done your whole goddamn life, then edit you to appear as insane and ugly as possible, and then -- in a matter of months, the entire world can watch your rejection on teevee!"
The financial compensation the Tyra Banks Show offfers is paying for the date. P.S., Tyra, I think you can afford a little more than that. Also, that surprises me, I think they'd be desperately interested in who might pay for dinner, the man on a date with a woman or the woman on a date with a woman. Like, as a social experiment.
Last year, following my appearance in a Marie Claire dating article [I was pictured as the "open minded dater" = laughably false], The Keith Ablow Show, which hadn't yet aired, asked me to come on. Not my thing, but also I was scared it'd be a trick like those shows often are. So I was like "No way, weirdo, I'm not gonna walk into that trap! I'll go out there all proud w/my gender theory, and you'll shove someone from high school who wants me dead in my face, or I'll be sitting next to my grandmother."
I think most gay women in NYC got the Tilla Tequilla casting call -- come live in a mansion with a Maxim model and 13 other hot lesbians, it's the first lesbian dating show ever!--obvs it was a trick.
*
Does anyone really ever get Toxic Shock Syndrome?
I used to be really scared of this when I first read about it.
*
Why does everyone in my neighborhood walk so slow?
I feel like Roadrunner when walking down 125th. I swear, no one else on the street has anywhere to be at all whatsoever like, ever. I just figure, I'm going, I may as well go fast. That's why they call me Flash Gordon.
These are the problems, as I see them:
1. An abundance of strollers and "walkers." I think everyone in this 'hood either has three babies or is almost dead and deaf in both ears. Howevs, I'd like to add that we could all move a lot faster if more people opened doors for strollers and walkers and if more people helped old ladies across the street. Seriously, I feel like I help a lot of lunatics cross 125th, I cannot continue to carry the whole team.
2. A plethora of street salesmen hawking wares including DVDs about the apocalypse and large photographs of Erykah Badu and slave executions and Urban Lit. I support the Urban Lit, but the rest of it can go, except the coffee guy.
3. We just need a greater sense of urgency cultivated in this 'hood, or more space between street-vendors and the street for someone to do the I-live-here-street-walk. Also, perhaps there could be hoverboards like in Back to the Future, I feel like we've totes passed whenever all that stuff was supposed to happen, what crap.
*
Why isn't there a way to search for random word frequency?
Like, I want something to search my documents and tell me if I'm using any particular word too much or more than once. Does this exist? I'm not asking to search for a specific word, I just want it to look at a document and be like "you used the word 'enable' 15 times." "You used totes 500 times." "You talk about Haviland too much."
*
Why am I like, how I am?
Angela: Why are you like this?
Jordan: Like what?
Angela: Like, how you are.
(My So-Called Life)
I mean, seriously. I guess that's what this blog is about, but also in doing that, I hope to write about why you're like, how you are too. You know? A few months ago we had mice, and Roommate-Ryan put out these no-kill mousetraps that mice can sometimes get out of and asked me You think they'll fall for it, don't they know better by now? They'd just keep going back to the same situation? And I was like, yeah, they would, I mean, you shouldn't ask me, of all people, to say they wouldn't run right in there, all earnest about peanut butter. In the morning, I sometimes lie there for a second wondering if I remember how to breathe, if it's smooth sailing from here on out, cool customer, congruent, catastrophic, sweet like memory and words and hands, my lungs open, I grasp through the dark.
*
What should we Vlog about?
Haviland and I are going to do more vlogs, since it was superfun. Howevs, we need you to tell us what to talk about or ask us questions. This is a Great Mystery of Life, and I want you to help me to understand. See, you help me, we make jokes, and then in China, a butterfly flaps it's wings and saves a village of children, who were hungry but now are not. It's magic. Like Puff. The Magic. Dragon. Sometimes, I wonder, why don't I just write stuff down here that I shouldn't say? Like what is it that creates the decency between my brain and my methods of communicating how my brain is operating? Will it die before I do? I admire it, it is stronger than me, I am grateful it exists. There are so many words I want to say but until I say them, they aren't real. I say a lot of words, so it's the ones I restrain from vocalizing or writing that astound me the most, at the end of the day.
So what should Haviland and I Vlog about? Topics. Email, comment, whatevs. Just throw out a topic if you want to and have one. Any topic or question. We've already used "football" and "blow jobs," so none of that.
*
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
A Little Madness in the Spring: Auto-Life, Interrupted
This post contains some true things about the True Life of Auto-Win. Like the MTV show True Life, but sans midgets, cheerleaders, Ritalin, binge drinking, video clips and annoying clank-clankity music.
What do you think?
Not like I should always actually be honest/semi-serious [I can never be ALTOGETHER serious]....but sometimes.
[I'll get to the intern/job stuff, my multi-tasking readers. You're all mighty fine, and I mean that.]
Present events defy us, the past
Has no such scruples.
-Jack Spicer1
I was gonna delete this post, morning-after bloggers-remorse style. BUT...I've been better at keeping up with others' blogs lately, and it seems many of us are: 1.drunk, 2.sad, 3.angry, 4.bored. Though I've never been "4," and lately not "1" either--I figure, there's some value in honesty, [even from me!] sometimes, since apparently everyone else [including Don Quijote] is doing it? For collective 1-4 ennui? We shall overcome, etc.?
What do you think?
Not like I should always actually be honest/semi-serious [I can never be ALTOGETHER serious]....but sometimes.
[I'll get to the intern/job stuff, my multi-tasking readers. You're all mighty fine, and I mean that.]
i.
A print-out of the last post, given to T.B. for copy-editing:
"I have never seen so many hyphens in a document in my life!"
[Clutches document, laughs, makes 'AAAarrrgh, Auto-Win!' face]
"It's driving me insane! Why do you think I'm in the psych ward?"
-T.B.
A print-out of the last post, given to T.B. for copy-editing:
"I have never seen so many hyphens in a document in my life!"
[Clutches document, laughs, makes 'AAAarrrgh, Auto-Win!' face]
"It's driving me insane! Why do you think I'm in the psych ward?"
-T.B.
Present events defy us, the past
Has no such scruples.
-Jack Spicer1
ii. Tuesday Morning, 5.22.2007
This morning I awoke with blood on my hands. I mean that literally: smeared red-and brownish, both hands, across all lines palm-readers read, blurring any remaining fortune. I know that might sound gross, but have you seen Battle Royale? That's gross. This's just what happened this morning when I woke up at 9:18 A.M. with blood on my hands. Yup, just my hands. Weird, right?
I foolishly expected a logical source: torn hangnail, chapped n' cracked lip, violent encounter between me and the nails I've employed to nail the fitted sheet to the mattress. Nothing.
It'd be like me to assume this means that I'm symbolically guilty of doing whathaveyouever to some other human and, subsequently, my victim's sought vengeance in the night, sneaky like a coal-bearing Santa Claus. But this morning, honestly: any potential symbol would be...like, a reflexive verb? An unvert must not be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or autosexual. He must be metasexual. He must enjoy going to bed with his own tears. English lacks the morphology of reflexive verbs that other languages feature, which's why we pretend like EVERY verb has equal potential for reflexive action. It's like the linguistic American Dream. [Even "worship," "love," "run," "peel."]
But hand-bloodied is REFLEXIVE starting now.
I don't know what that means, really. I think it's like: Auto-Win, get a manicure?So: iChat. I'm the girl, Lainy is the dog. Icons, weirdos.
iii. A Love Poem to Angelina Jolie
T.B. gave me her tooth two days ago: Sunday, May 20th. That morning, I brunched for Heather's birthday. She got appropriately sloshed, it was fantastic. Seriously.
I was walking from the train station: I have something for you, T.B. said on the phone. You're not going to like it. It's a body part.
It would've been amazing if she'd been like: What's up, Auto-Win, here's my heart [plops heart into hand] and uh, ripped off my foot earlier. [Places foot in my other hand, bloody.]
*
"I know stealing a foot is weird. But hello, living in a house where there's a foot available to be stolen is weird."
-Claire, Six Feet Under
*
"I know stealing a foot is weird. But hello, living in a house where there's a foot available to be stolen is weird."
-Claire, Six Feet Under
*
T.B. wrote a blog about the tooth-giving incident, which she obviously deleted within 24 hours, as is often her way.
[During Visiting Hours, T.B. attacks mad-quick duties, like fixing my typos and deleting her blog, on her Crackberry.]
The tooth-blog was posted via phone dictation, however, and when I was reading it back to her I accidentally said "truth" instead of "tooth." She told me to leave it in: tooth/truth.
[Her name drop: death: a tooth among strangers. Jack Spicer.]
Anyhow, she took the tooth back, put it in her mouth, and I commented on the blog that I could've left it for the Tooth Fairy, if I'd kept it.
"In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended. What goes up does not necessarily come down; a body at rest does not tend to stay at rest; and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction. Time, too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: tables can be clocks; faces, flowers."
-Susana Kaysen
-Susana Kaysen
Like: I coulda put it under my pillow for a fairy who would've turned it to cash or gold or else. Bling-bling-bling goes the alarm clock.
iv. Kleenex
Then this afternoon, I had a very brief nose bleed. [Still, this isn't near as gross as Battle Royale or Kill Bill. Also some bloggers talk about bathroom activities, and I don't do that, like, ever. Not in real life either.] Why'd this happen? No clue.
I've only had two real ones, ever, both times as a kid:
1. U of Michigan basketball game, sitting in the nose-bleed section. Everyone made that nose-bleed in the nose-bleed section joke, over and over again, until I got an ear-bleed.
2. In line at Wendy's in Ann Arbor. Anticipating Frosty, receiving Kleenex.
So maybe that was it? The real cause of hand-blooding? Something's loose in there? How immature of me.
"If reality isn't my picture of it, I'm lost."
-Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless
-Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless
I found myself remembering the morning he2 [no name, totes purposeful elusiveness] left my room and then my house with a nosebleed: up all night on blow, he called from his car, he was bleeding all over his shirt and driving too. I was writhing with really poignant misery. I'm coming down down down down.
Later he called from bed: Marie, my shirt's bloody, I might die in my sleep, okay?
He slept for six hours or so, maybe: he had a date with his other girlfriend that afternoon. I crashed/burned, woke up 14 hours later and met him at Champion House [Ann Arbor, MI] for Hibachi Shrimp. That's a place where they cook the food in front of you and do knife tricks, and it feels very much like being hit over the head softly with a puppet when it's just two of you, like you want to say: "You can cook that privately if you want, it's just the two of us?"
For me: one night only. For him: blow stuck around til he left Michigan. That can happen in Michigan. That can happen almost anywhere, actually. Or something like that.
[Vintage riese and devil-kitty.]v. Roof-Top Soccer
Last night [Monday, May 21st], post-2N, pre-bed, I went to Tara D.3's on Claremont. I drew her a picture of herself. I messed up almost every body part [breasts too small, arms w/o elbows, one leg disconnected, etc.] and then wrote DEVIL-KITTY on it, referencing her former Myspace name.
Her friend Elliot told me I should be making advertising money from this blog with my traffic, and the best way to do that'd be to tell all of my readers to just click the gmail ad, even if it's for something lame, like Mother's Retreats or the "Are You Gay?" quiz, and then I'll get money. OK do that right now. Thanks.
We played soccer on the rooftop. Tara's got a good view. It was so dark, I could barely make out the white orb of soccer-ball, but bodies: always, heavy beating bodies. Tara, Angelica, Elliot, Tom, Caroline. The weather was more-or-less perfect. A violent flash of lights and sound and someone asked What's That just as Tara D. said Firecrackers and someone else said gunshots and I said The Apocalypse.
For a moment when we'd first arrived to the roof I said: It's so quiet, and Angelica said: It's nice, it's rare.
"The view from his office on the first floor of the maximum security-ward building was restful: trees, wind, sky. I was often silent. There was so little silence on our ward. I looked at the trees and said nothing, and he looked at me and said nothing. It was companionable."
-S.K., G.I.
-S.K., G.I.
We went back inside, downstairs, to a vague drum-beat. Back in the living room:
Tara-D: Are you gonna get off your computer and come back to the world?
Me: [to computer] THIS IS MY WORLD.
Me: [to computer] THIS IS MY WORLD.
vi. Girlfriend, Interrupted
Just before emerging from her room to hand me the tooth, T.B.'s roommate looked me in the eyes, clutching her blue bathrobe, hair a-flutter beneath flowered headband and wild eyes: We might have to call the police. They're trying to freeze us out of here. It's an icebox.
The next day in the cafeteria, it's just T.B., myself, and T.B.'s mother when the the roommate--now ex-roommate, as they switched rooms the night before because: "My roommate's totally crazy. Like TOTALLY CRAZY." -T.B.--joined us, due to aforementioned cold and her new roommate kicking her out. She's made toast and is spreading peanut butter on it with her fingers.
Someone closes the door. [Someone from the outside!] The now-ex-roommate asks: "Why'd they close the door?"
I say: "They're locking us in here."
T.B.'s Mom [as we laugh together]: "Don't say that! Don't encourage her!"
The now-ex-roommate goes on to cause an alarm-lockdown-inducing ruckus.
Whoops.
vii.
"Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?"
-SK
"One wants to get something off one's chest. One doesn't know quite what it is that one wants to get off the chest until one's got it off. But I couldn't apply the word intention positively to any of my poems. Or to any poem."
-T.S. Eliot
"Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?"
-SK
"One wants to get something off one's chest. One doesn't know quite what it is that one wants to get off the chest until one's got it off. But I couldn't apply the word intention positively to any of my poems. Or to any poem."
-T.S. Eliot
1: Jack Spicer's one of those poets you can name drop to look super smart and avant garde, it's even hipper than hipster [Dave Berman, Fredrick Seidel, etc.] Like, if you already know who he is and you read that name-drop, you'd be like, "Wow, Auto-Win is hard-core." You can't get any of his books anywhere, not even amazon, you have to go to some special rare bookstore. Like Tickle-me-Elmo at Christmas-time.
2: An ex.
3: This girl's been footnoted before...I met Tara on craigslist in March 05. In good times, in bad times, we'll be on each other's various sides forever-more. Lives with Lainy near Columbia, where she's in grad school. Not to be confused with T.B..
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Carousel of Progress: Melted Cheese/Dead Poets Edition
To pour smelling-salts into the open wound of my recent social-networking-drop-out , MediaWeek's just reported that 70 percent of robots young humans belong to things like myspace and anyone who doesn't will fail at life. Luckily, I've been comfortable since 1981 just chillin' in the outcasted 30 percent [fighting against the grain, etc.] so whatevs, obviously they found their survey-takers on social networking sites, I dunno, I didn't read the article, that woulda been like reading Fitness magazine during a Fibro attack, which I've never done. I'd read People Who Can't Leave Their Room/Bed Magazine, otherwise known as Poets & Writers.
[guess y'all gotta join OurChart now!!!]
Seemingly Unrelated Tangent: There's this period of time in May between when the heat sets in and when your air-conditioner gets set in.
That's happening right now. What did people do before air conditioning? [Continuation of the last blog's opening query: what did Emily Dickinson do without air conditioning?] I was an American-history obsessed child, pining to travel The Oregon Trail, churn butter, befriend the Cherokee, be the Cherokee, etc. Or I'd wish I was Pocahontas [she's my great-great-great-etc-grandmother. See photo, LEFT, in which I wear hand-made Native American "headband" In Earnest, circa '94] or Jo March: climbing trees, playing boy's games, cutting off my hair, and ultimately opening a school for poor boys, a.k.a. "ragamuffins," so that all people can be equal and learn-ed. But now I realize that wouldn't've been much fun without air conditioning. '
So today I introduce a new segment: THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS. In which I look back on the century and tell you what's good and what makes me wanna live in a Wigwam.
[One day, I'll progress into a blogger who writes smooth, well-founded transitions and concise, well-founded introductions.]
[P.S.: My track record for "sticking to the 'segment idea'" for all previously conceptualized segments: 0%. This one's good though, I think.]
Four categories: VIRTUAL, LARGE BOX-SHAPED OBJECTS, PORTABLE ITEMS, FOOD-STUFFS. Might repeat these categories for future segments. Might not. You never know what I'm gonna do. After all, lately TB & I's internet presence has felt much like a complicated act of cyber-performance-art.
W/O: myspace, obvs!
Just call me! So I can ignore you! Want a hot photo of me? There aren't any. What if I turned "Sorry" into an abbreviation, like "Totes" and "Obvs"? It'd sound like "SARS," which, as a disease, is something to be sorry about, I mean, SORS about. I crack myself up. Seriously, I'm laughing right now. SORS, dudes! I've considered crafting a new profile; but I actually don't wanna be on myspace, I just want my old comments back, and creating a new profile won't fix that. Honestly, this does feel right-er to me. Like I'm being true to MY space, you know? I only joined it in the first place in May '05 so Tara1 could show me photos of this girl she was about to go out with. I was like What's myspace? Looks retarded. This color scheme blows. Why's my computer freaking out? What's with this annoying music and the glittery icons? Do people still listen to Newfound Glory?
[JK, Myspace rocks.]
W/: Bartleby.com
This's like, all the parts of the library that you can't bear hiking into anyhow because it smells like dead poets and the books are so heavy you start pining for that initialed Jansport you sacrificed in 1997. It's the best reference site of all time. I can't make any jokes about it, because I'm dead serious, y'all. It'll change your life. It changed mine. E.g. I'm much smarter now then before. And I can hyperlink my heart out.
W/O: Forced TeeVee
Last night, I tried to work the TeeVee for the first time since moving in, 'cause I wanted to see which of these young women would become America's Next Top Model. [Unfortunately, it wasn't Hoolihay. Boo.] No dice: I had to actually press buttons on the TV-box itself, as the remote was boggling. Then I promptly sat in front of my ibook, only glancing up briefly to note how little I care about this Cycle, or really any of 'em since the departure of Kim.
Also: I've seen roommate-Zoey do fancy things with the remote, like making live TV rewind and fast-forward? I don't know how this DVD-R thing works and probs never will.
But ANYHOW SERIOUSLY: I despise teevees in random public spaces. I think we should be forced to choose a program and commit if we want TV. Not like: Hey what's up, I'm waiting for the doctor, reading my Highlights for Children, oh HEY TV what's up genocide? Like, gimme my laundry before I have to watch one more moment of Keith Ablow, please. Thanks. When someone says "Lets just see what's on TV," and just clicks it on, I want to gouge my eyes out with mechanical pencils and run away to Walden Pond. That's why I don't know how to click it on.
[Side note: Yes, I have an L Word blog. Totes Paradox.]
W/: Air conditioner, obviously.
As a kid, we went without. Mom insisted it was a waste, so we'd sleep in the basement when the weather turned unbearable, which was fun, like a camping adventure but with Legos and a damp-basement smell. In '95, we moved to a place with central air but Mom insisted on keeping the house steamy-hot til we almost died of heat-stroke. I always envied the rich kids who kept their rooms ice-cold even while out of the house. It was just waiting for them, like "Sure, whatevs, whenever you're ready, I'm here for you, cold as ice, baby!" But this habit emitted toxins into the air, etc., thus global warming, etc.
W/O: Cell Phones
I might just be saying this 'cause I've dropped my month-old Sidekick on the floor so many times already that now the screen's slowly cracking, suggesting impending breakage. That being said, I love that I can get email on it. I also love it's size. I wish it was bigger. I hate talking on tiny phones, it makes me feel like Shaquille O'Neal eating a White Castle burger. Or Alice when she's 10 feet tall.
W/: Ipod
Not because it can store ten gazillion songs (hypothetically, if it wasn't jam-packed with six-hour audiobooks and ten podcasts), but because it's teeny-tiny. I never liked discmans. Skippity skippity cumbersome monster-things. I stuck with my Walkman/mix tapes 'til I got an ipod. I like my music portable and my phone cumbersome. I prefer Ira Glass and Patti Smith to Voicemail.
W/O: Restaurant Menus Featuring Cheese n' Onions n' Whatever Smothered Nonsense
It's just lazy, really. Why be a real chef when you can just de-frost a hunk of filet and coat it in melted cheese, onions, peppers, bacon bits, chives, sour cream, and whatever else Applebees can think of to send its patrons into immediate cardiac arrest? I mean, a frat boy or a drunk person could do that. In fact, they are doing it right now, and as my ex-the-frat-boy always said: "When in doubt, add melted cheese!" Except there was no doubting about it. He was CERTAIN he wanted melted cheese on EVERYTHING, especially the hot dogs he exploited with chili-beans and Kraft Singles in our microwave. They were like: "Help us, Marie!" but I was like "Sorry, I'm busy making my veggie dogs in a pot like a civilized person."
[JK, I microwave veggie dogs when there's no one around to be smug to. Heather2's sister Annie microwaves everything, even Twizzlers. She got inspired by Haviland, who also microwaves everything. I refrigerate everything, like cookies and nuts.]
I love melted cheese as much as the next person--in fact, MORE [along with peanut butter, it's 50% of my daily diet]--but that brainstorming new-menu-item session coulda been spent creating a fun spring salad for Haviland and I to enjoy. Also, all that Monterey Jack doesn't disguise the taste of injustice, Benniganbeehollihays! I know there's body parts in your meat, I read about it in Fast Food Nation. P.S. for NYC-Dwellers: there's a "meatpacking industry" as well as a "meatpacking district" [which's a cool place to party for people who like to leave their apartments], and this industry's mainly centered in the Southwest, relies on cheap "disposable" immigrant labor, and is evil.
W/: HANDS DOWN TOTES Easy Mac
Summer '99, fresh outta high school, I visited my best friend Ryan in NYC, where he'd snagged a $400/month apartment on 79th and Broadway and was interning at MTC. This sublet had a catch: it was smaller than our dorms at boarding school by about 70%. Ryan told me he lived on Kraft Dinner, but I didn't believe him: he had no stove! I observed his "preparation" of "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" in the microwave, and though it did involve the contents of the KMC box, the resulting dish was not anything like actual KMC. As in: the noodles were still hard. Luckily, someone's wheels of invention were already turning and EasyMac debuted just in time for me to go to college.
Side note, re: Ryan's apartment, air conditioning:
'Cause he had no AC, Ryan had a sadistic pre-bedtime ritual which I was submitted to during my visit. He'd shuffle me into the shared bathroom, turn the water to ice-cold, thrust me under, and stand/leap like a jumping-bean on the other side of the shower chanting mind over matter mind over matter until I turned blue. Then, teeth a-chatterin', he'd usher me into bed and explain: You have to fall asleep within the next ten minutes. Otherwise you'll get hot again and need another cold shower. Hurry, hurry.
Which's probably what Emily Dickinson did, too. She mentioned, then forgot; then lightly as a reed, bent toward the water...
These girls should be familiar, but just in case:
1 Tara: Tara's a regular character on this blog and Auto-Straddle, and the core of the circle of craigslist. Lives in my hood with Lainy and goes to Columbia and helped me move. Not to be confused with TB, who's first name is also Tara, but it's pronounced Tah-rah.
2 Heather: Haviland's girlfriend, duh, and faithful Auto-Straddle humorist. Stage Manager of Altar Boyz and whatever else needs to be managed/taken care of. When she gets off the train she says This is Me! even when no one else is around.
[guess y'all gotta join OurChart now!!!]
Seemingly Unrelated Tangent: There's this period of time in May between when the heat sets in and when your air-conditioner gets set in.
That's happening right now. What did people do before air conditioning? [Continuation of the last blog's opening query: what did Emily Dickinson do without air conditioning?] I was an American-history obsessed child, pining to travel The Oregon Trail, churn butter, befriend the Cherokee, be the Cherokee, etc. Or I'd wish I was Pocahontas [she's my great-great-great-etc-grandmother. See photo, LEFT, in which I wear hand-made Native American "headband" In Earnest, circa '94] or Jo March: climbing trees, playing boy's games, cutting off my hair, and ultimately opening a school for poor boys, a.k.a. "ragamuffins," so that all people can be equal and learn-ed. But now I realize that wouldn't've been much fun without air conditioning. '
So today I introduce a new segment: THE CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS. In which I look back on the century and tell you what's good and what makes me wanna live in a Wigwam.
[One day, I'll progress into a blogger who writes smooth, well-founded transitions and concise, well-founded introductions.]
[P.S.: My track record for "sticking to the 'segment idea'" for all previously conceptualized segments: 0%. This one's good though, I think.]
Four categories: VIRTUAL, LARGE BOX-SHAPED OBJECTS, PORTABLE ITEMS, FOOD-STUFFS. Might repeat these categories for future segments. Might not. You never know what I'm gonna do. After all, lately TB & I's internet presence has felt much like a complicated act of cyber-performance-art.
VIRTUAL:
W/O: myspace, obvs!
Just call me! So I can ignore you! Want a hot photo of me? There aren't any. What if I turned "Sorry" into an abbreviation, like "Totes" and "Obvs"? It'd sound like "SARS," which, as a disease, is something to be sorry about, I mean, SORS about. I crack myself up. Seriously, I'm laughing right now. SORS, dudes! I've considered crafting a new profile; but I actually don't wanna be on myspace, I just want my old comments back, and creating a new profile won't fix that. Honestly, this does feel right-er to me. Like I'm being true to MY space, you know? I only joined it in the first place in May '05 so Tara1 could show me photos of this girl she was about to go out with. I was like What's myspace? Looks retarded. This color scheme blows. Why's my computer freaking out? What's with this annoying music and the glittery icons? Do people still listen to Newfound Glory?
[JK, Myspace rocks.]
W/: Bartleby.com
This's like, all the parts of the library that you can't bear hiking into anyhow because it smells like dead poets and the books are so heavy you start pining for that initialed Jansport you sacrificed in 1997. It's the best reference site of all time. I can't make any jokes about it, because I'm dead serious, y'all. It'll change your life. It changed mine. E.g. I'm much smarter now then before. And I can hyperlink my heart out.
Vintage Chat Convo, Also Printed in a Previous Blog Entry [not a good one, thus no hyperlink]:
TB: my favorite reference point online is columbia's bartleby thing.
me: hm, wheres that at.
TB: http://bartleby.com
me: "right after that preposition you used to end that sentence, marie."
holy shit. this place is fucking awesome.
TB: it has everything.
me: wheeee!!! the word of the day is "fustian." that's a good word.
TB: interesting. you'd think it was a typo for faustian. or at least i would.
me: i thought it was?
me: hm, wheres that at.
TB: http://bartleby.com
me: "right after that preposition you used to end that sentence, marie."
holy shit. this place is fucking awesome.
TB: it has everything.
me: wheeee!!! the word of the day is "fustian." that's a good word.
TB: interesting. you'd think it was a typo for faustian. or at least i would.
me: i thought it was?
LARGE BOX SHAPED OBJECT:
W/O: Forced TeeVee
Last night, I tried to work the TeeVee for the first time since moving in, 'cause I wanted to see which of these young women would become America's Next Top Model. [Unfortunately, it wasn't Hoolihay. Boo.] No dice: I had to actually press buttons on the TV-box itself, as the remote was boggling. Then I promptly sat in front of my ibook, only glancing up briefly to note how little I care about this Cycle, or really any of 'em since the departure of Kim.
Also: I've seen roommate-Zoey do fancy things with the remote, like making live TV rewind and fast-forward? I don't know how this DVD-R thing works and probs never will.
But ANYHOW SERIOUSLY: I despise teevees in random public spaces. I think we should be forced to choose a program and commit if we want TV. Not like: Hey what's up, I'm waiting for the doctor, reading my Highlights for Children, oh HEY TV what's up genocide? Like, gimme my laundry before I have to watch one more moment of Keith Ablow, please. Thanks. When someone says "Lets just see what's on TV," and just clicks it on, I want to gouge my eyes out with mechanical pencils and run away to Walden Pond. That's why I don't know how to click it on.
[Side note: Yes, I have an L Word blog. Totes Paradox.]
W/: Air conditioner, obviously.
As a kid, we went without. Mom insisted it was a waste, so we'd sleep in the basement when the weather turned unbearable, which was fun, like a camping adventure but with Legos and a damp-basement smell. In '95, we moved to a place with central air but Mom insisted on keeping the house steamy-hot til we almost died of heat-stroke. I always envied the rich kids who kept their rooms ice-cold even while out of the house. It was just waiting for them, like "Sure, whatevs, whenever you're ready, I'm here for you, cold as ice, baby!" But this habit emitted toxins into the air, etc., thus global warming, etc.
PORTABLE ITEM:
W/O: Cell Phones
I might just be saying this 'cause I've dropped my month-old Sidekick on the floor so many times already that now the screen's slowly cracking, suggesting impending breakage. That being said, I love that I can get email on it. I also love it's size. I wish it was bigger. I hate talking on tiny phones, it makes me feel like Shaquille O'Neal eating a White Castle burger. Or Alice when she's 10 feet tall.
W/: Ipod
Not because it can store ten gazillion songs (hypothetically, if it wasn't jam-packed with six-hour audiobooks and ten podcasts), but because it's teeny-tiny. I never liked discmans. Skippity skippity cumbersome monster-things. I stuck with my Walkman/mix tapes 'til I got an ipod. I like my music portable and my phone cumbersome. I prefer Ira Glass and Patti Smith to Voicemail.
FOOD ITEM:
W/O: Restaurant Menus Featuring Cheese n' Onions n' Whatever Smothered Nonsense
It's just lazy, really. Why be a real chef when you can just de-frost a hunk of filet and coat it in melted cheese, onions, peppers, bacon bits, chives, sour cream, and whatever else Applebees can think of to send its patrons into immediate cardiac arrest? I mean, a frat boy or a drunk person could do that. In fact, they are doing it right now, and as my ex-the-frat-boy always said: "When in doubt, add melted cheese!" Except there was no doubting about it. He was CERTAIN he wanted melted cheese on EVERYTHING, especially the hot dogs he exploited with chili-beans and Kraft Singles in our microwave. They were like: "Help us, Marie!" but I was like "Sorry, I'm busy making my veggie dogs in a pot like a civilized person."
[JK, I microwave veggie dogs when there's no one around to be smug to. Heather2's sister Annie microwaves everything, even Twizzlers. She got inspired by Haviland, who also microwaves everything. I refrigerate everything, like cookies and nuts.]
I love melted cheese as much as the next person--in fact, MORE [along with peanut butter, it's 50% of my daily diet]--but that brainstorming new-menu-item session coulda been spent creating a fun spring salad for Haviland and I to enjoy. Also, all that Monterey Jack doesn't disguise the taste of injustice, Benniganbeehollihays! I know there's body parts in your meat, I read about it in Fast Food Nation. P.S. for NYC-Dwellers: there's a "meatpacking industry" as well as a "meatpacking district" [which's a cool place to party for people who like to leave their apartments], and this industry's mainly centered in the Southwest, relies on cheap "disposable" immigrant labor, and is evil.
Summer '99, fresh outta high school, I visited my best friend Ryan in NYC, where he'd snagged a $400/month apartment on 79th and Broadway and was interning at MTC. This sublet had a catch: it was smaller than our dorms at boarding school by about 70%. Ryan told me he lived on Kraft Dinner, but I didn't believe him: he had no stove! I observed his "preparation" of "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" in the microwave, and though it did involve the contents of the KMC box, the resulting dish was not anything like actual KMC. As in: the noodles were still hard. Luckily, someone's wheels of invention were already turning and EasyMac debuted just in time for me to go to college.
Side note, re: Ryan's apartment, air conditioning:
'Cause he had no AC, Ryan had a sadistic pre-bedtime ritual which I was submitted to during my visit. He'd shuffle me into the shared bathroom, turn the water to ice-cold, thrust me under, and stand/leap like a jumping-bean on the other side of the shower chanting mind over matter mind over matter until I turned blue. Then, teeth a-chatterin', he'd usher me into bed and explain: You have to fall asleep within the next ten minutes. Otherwise you'll get hot again and need another cold shower. Hurry, hurry.
Which's probably what Emily Dickinson did, too. She mentioned, then forgot; then lightly as a reed, bent toward the water...
These girls should be familiar, but just in case:
1 Tara: Tara's a regular character on this blog and Auto-Straddle, and the core of the circle of craigslist. Lives in my hood with Lainy and goes to Columbia and helped me move. Not to be confused with TB, who's first name is also Tara, but it's pronounced Tah-rah.
2 Heather: Haviland's girlfriend, duh, and faithful Auto-Straddle humorist. Stage Manager of Altar Boyz and whatever else needs to be managed/taken care of. When she gets off the train she says This is Me! even when no one else is around.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
To Wash Off the Heat: Underwater Pattern-Swim, My Space Auto-Grin
I wonder how Emily Dickinson made it without air conditioning. I guess that was before global warming. If I was in Michigan and fifteen years old, tonight'd be a perfect night to jump the fence at the Marriot out by the highway, careful not to catch/snag our super-cool skater pants in transit [though torn-up skater pants'd be even super-cooler, I mean, talk about distressed denim, yeah?!]. And then: safely across, we'd strip to our conformist Speedos, glide into the pool--which we'd know/feel but not SEE was all aqua-blue--and splash and dunk in the dark like the best kind of petty criminals. Like embracing the warm, etc. Instead, I'm in NYC, so I'll just whine on my blog.
With just the door ajar, that oceans are.....
Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying that all the good melodies have been used up and there'll be no more good songs, ever. Jake1 used to tell me not to worry because people are inventing new ways to make music. E.g. in his band, Flashpapr, Ben played "computer," like he sat on stage with his lap-top. I thought that was very neat at the time, now it's probably normal. Flashpapr wrote one of the best songs ever written, ever, called "White Flowers." You can listen to it right here. Feeling half-finished and a strange sense of guilt: there is no dream you'll have when you sleep tonight that includes me in your arms...
This's a segue into talking about myspace, which has also "been done" by most bloggers, including me. This time's different though. I'm playing lap-top.
Marie, why did you erase your myspace profile? I'm not sure really. I think I just wanted to see how it felt to delete my myspace profile. 'Cause I think the internet is really funny. Like, all I have to do is press one little button [twice, because obvs Tom is like "WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME??!! You can never return to the way things were!"] and like: poof! There goes a whole year of stuff that I worked hard on and actually just spent three hours re-modeling! Bye! Like, I've clicked a lot of buttons on this computer, haven't I? A LOT!!! Like, millions. But that button, which I clicked with the same physical action I've used to click a whole lot of other buttons, made My Entire Space disappear forever! I guess I did it because, for one sweet minute, I felt like disappearing too.
I'm over that now.
How does it feel? Well, I feel really bad because my friends/fans put sweet comments on there that are now gone. So, yeah, that's how it feels: guilty. That's okay though 'cause I got a Beethoven Bust to keep me warm.
Cause I never explain who's who:
1: Jake. Violin-player. Met in Ann Arbor, MI at Commie High. Colleged at Columbia in NYC, and, a little bit after that, moved to CA w/his girlfriend for music school. One of the best people I've ever known, hands-down totes.
2: Sarah. Harp-player. Met in Boarding School (Interlochen). She wanted to live in NYC real bad too, so I convinced her to drop out of Tufts and move there with me, so she did.
With just the door ajar, that oceans are.....
Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying that all the good melodies have been used up and there'll be no more good songs, ever. Jake1 used to tell me not to worry because people are inventing new ways to make music. E.g. in his band, Flashpapr, Ben played "computer," like he sat on stage with his lap-top. I thought that was very neat at the time, now it's probably normal. Flashpapr wrote one of the best songs ever written, ever, called "White Flowers." You can listen to it right here. Feeling half-finished and a strange sense of guilt: there is no dream you'll have when you sleep tonight that includes me in your arms...
This's a segue into talking about myspace, which has also "been done" by most bloggers, including me. This time's different though. I'm playing lap-top.
Marie, why did you erase your myspace profile? I'm not sure really. I think I just wanted to see how it felt to delete my myspace profile. 'Cause I think the internet is really funny. Like, all I have to do is press one little button [twice, because obvs Tom is like "WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME??!! You can never return to the way things were!"] and like: poof! There goes a whole year of stuff that I worked hard on and actually just spent three hours re-modeling! Bye! Like, I've clicked a lot of buttons on this computer, haven't I? A LOT!!! Like, millions. But that button, which I clicked with the same physical action I've used to click a whole lot of other buttons, made My Entire Space disappear forever! I guess I did it because, for one sweet minute, I felt like disappearing too.
I'm over that now.
How does it feel? Well, I feel really bad because my friends/fans put sweet comments on there that are now gone. So, yeah, that's how it feels: guilty. That's okay though 'cause I got a Beethoven Bust to keep me warm.
TB's suggested I write a blog entry about all the things I've done for no reason, like selecting the name of this blog or my AOL screen name.
Tara: where does "automatic win" come from?
[side note: hers are longer]
The parts of my existence I put great thought into are random; e.g., a Sunday Top Ten, what to pack when I leave home for a day, what magazine to read at the gym, how to phrase things in emails, what to have for dinner, a quote for a birthday card, what library books to check out. Perhaps it's that these small things take up so much mental energy, I've got none left over for many randomized big things.
But people, I think about people: I hold on tight though I often attempt to pretend like I don't, like I'm not holding at all: and even those few attachments often feel cumbersome, unwieldy, possibly dangerous. It is, in fact, dangerous. It's the scariest thing of all time. I take their advice, too. I lean on them, metaphorically and literally. Though literally often it's more of a lap-lean than a shoulder-lean.
So then there's all the things I just decide lickity-split, saying, Fuck it: Pros/cons/whatevers. Boarding school: my Mom and I were fighting, and I yelled, hypothetically but with feeling; WHATEVER I'M GOING TO BOARDING SCHOOL. So then I got on the computer, waited til 1997 for the page to load, and applied, and got in, and left. I learn every room long enough to make it to the door, then I hear it click shut behind me.
Even college. Because I wasn't accepted to my top choice, I was like, well, I miss Ryan, and if I go to Sarah Lawrence, he and I can hang out a lot, which'd be fun. So okay, I'll go there.
Then, November '99, at Ernie's in Soho, SLC Parents Weekend, my Mom was feeding me and Jake and my brother Lewis and I was freaking out inside about everything; my whole body smelled like chlorine 'cause I'd spent the morning swimming laps and wondering why my heart wouldn't ever stop beating.
Why did I decide what I did that day? Because my Mom said, Marie maybe you should go to school part time. Maybe that will help you relax and then within a few hours I'd decided to drop out of college altogether, a thought which'd only entered my mind that day as a natural extension of the part-time idea. Like, why do part time when I could do NO TIME?
Back then, my rooommate Rachel would say amazing things when my alarm went off at Four A.M., always loud and piercing like a fire alarm, like the end of the world. [I mean: her voice, my alarm, both.] Rachel would shout: There are elephants pounding in my head! Could you possibly be any louder? Do you have to clomp around like that? So I quit the crew team before the first regatta. Because of the morning practices, because of Rachel, because my body was beginning to feel separate from itself, an abandoned ship marked by an enthusiastic if waning flag.
But then! Rachel’s alarm--Rachel preferred the radio---began at 6 (I’m going swimming at 6, Rachel said) and continued for hours, every 9 minutes, another snooze, another painful pop song. Sometimes the alarm didn’t wake her up, and I'd yell: Rachel! To which Rachel responded, on a good day, with something like I know! or on a worse day, I’m fucking going swimming! or on a really bad day: It’s not as bad as your fucking alarm and you clomping like a horse, like an elephant, like a goddamn tortoise, I’ve never seen a skinny girl make so much fucking noise!
One morning, our fight escalated til we were tearing through the house like tigers, leaping across banisters, between other people’s rooms, yelling, throwing around animal metaphors, any swear word that fit neatly between two other words. It ended at the bottom of the stairwell, I looked at her eyes: they flashed with hate. Then, as if on cue, we both started crying.
Rachel had bleached hair and big eyes and wrote dirty brilliant poems. I told my friends on the phone: Eyes that get big, like a frog’s, when she is mad. She can be quite beautiful, I told them, and also quite frightening.
So I packed up a backpack and stayed in my friends’ dormitory for a week. A trial separation. I called myself a “hobo.” It was a joke. I slept with Amber, cuddled up next to her: she slept in tights and dresses and had dinner at 4 A.M. Sometimes we'd go to "The Grill" and wait for the cookies to come out of the oven, then lick them off our fingers while they were still hot and moist and perfect. I'd fall asleep before Amber, but sometimes we fell asleep together. She kept a list of all the boys she'd kissed on her nightstand.
Rachel and I both started smoking but didn't tell each other. We shared an ashtray.
In Amber's dorm, there was no yelling, only smoking and parties. At the end of my week as a hobo, my mother visited and I relished the sanctuary of a hotel. I slept on a cot and it felt like paradise. I felt ready to return to my room, prepared for more yelling, for more half-asleep fights, to pillows thrust across rooms, to unbearable alarm clocks.
Two weeks later, I told my Don I was to dropping out of college and moving to New York City, to take time off before I lost my mind. Because I had friends in the city, because I was on the Slim-Fast diet, literally, but also underweight, because what I did eat I quickly got rid of, because I knew there was no reason for this besides that I wasn't happy and needed to leave.
I wanted to be in the city, anyhow. That's where I'd wanted to go to school.
"I just can't take this like, little fake world on a hill," I told my Don.
"That's called 'going to a Liberal Arts College," He told me.
"Well, I guess I don't want to do that then," I told him.
He told me I was the best student, the most promising writer, he'd had in years, that it'd be a huge mistake to leave. Yes: he extracted a can of gasoline from his pocket, he threw it recklessly around my fire and then turned his head when it started burning I hate white rabbits I hate white rabbits.
And Behold! Ryan! After two weeks of ignoring me completely because I'd disobeyed him by attending a play he was in [he thought it was bad, and my opinion mattered too much to risk things], Ryan told me: Marie, I'm coming with you. I'm moving to the city with you. And we did. We got a bunk bed. Sarah slept in the other room.
The name of Flashpapr's album: Do What You Must Do.
Rachel decided to move back home to Philadelphia to dance, because she didn’t like the dancing at Sarah Lawrence. Because she felt fat. Because her family, she reminded me, is in Philly.
We left behind an empty room, poster putty like melted fossils of a half-started life. We left with our reasons for leaving.
And just like that: March '00, at a cafe in Paris [I'd just recently pondered going to Europe for a weekend and then bought a ticket, and by "pondered" I mean, "considered for about five minutes"] where I'm eating something flat and rich and gross and not filling, my then-boyfriend says You should go to U of M, that's great in-state tuition, you won't be in debt when you graduate and I was like, okay.
So just like that: lickity split, decided to go home, even though I used to tell people I'd rather go to an all women's school in the middle of the desert than go back to Ann Arbor. But you never know, you know? You never know what you must do 'til you're doing it, sometimes.
Vintage Chat Convo:
Tara: where does "automatic win" come from?
me: oh, automatic win?
is that i automatically win a girl's picture even if she won't give it to me
and i automatically win the "who has the longest fingers" contest
Tara: oh, that's sweet
right on garth
obvs
4:14 AM you have some madass long fingers
me: actually, i don't know where it [automatic win] came from.
The parts of my existence I put great thought into are random; e.g., a Sunday Top Ten, what to pack when I leave home for a day, what magazine to read at the gym, how to phrase things in emails, what to have for dinner, a quote for a birthday card, what library books to check out. Perhaps it's that these small things take up so much mental energy, I've got none left over for many randomized big things.
But people, I think about people: I hold on tight though I often attempt to pretend like I don't, like I'm not holding at all: and even those few attachments often feel cumbersome, unwieldy, possibly dangerous. It is, in fact, dangerous. It's the scariest thing of all time. I take their advice, too. I lean on them, metaphorically and literally. Though literally often it's more of a lap-lean than a shoulder-lean.
"I wanted only to try and live in accord with the promptings that came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"
-Herman Hesse, Demian
-Herman Hesse, Demian
So then there's all the things I just decide lickity-split, saying, Fuck it: Pros/cons/whatevers. Boarding school: my Mom and I were fighting, and I yelled, hypothetically but with feeling; WHATEVER I'M GOING TO BOARDING SCHOOL. So then I got on the computer, waited til 1997 for the page to load, and applied, and got in, and left. I learn every room long enough to make it to the door, then I hear it click shut behind me.
Even college. Because I wasn't accepted to my top choice, I was like, well, I miss Ryan, and if I go to Sarah Lawrence, he and I can hang out a lot, which'd be fun. So okay, I'll go there.
Then, November '99, at Ernie's in Soho, SLC Parents Weekend, my Mom was feeding me and Jake and my brother Lewis and I was freaking out inside about everything; my whole body smelled like chlorine 'cause I'd spent the morning swimming laps and wondering why my heart wouldn't ever stop beating.
Why did I decide what I did that day? Because my Mom said, Marie maybe you should go to school part time. Maybe that will help you relax and then within a few hours I'd decided to drop out of college altogether, a thought which'd only entered my mind that day as a natural extension of the part-time idea. Like, why do part time when I could do NO TIME?
Back then, my rooommate Rachel would say amazing things when my alarm went off at Four A.M., always loud and piercing like a fire alarm, like the end of the world. [I mean: her voice, my alarm, both.] Rachel would shout: There are elephants pounding in my head! Could you possibly be any louder? Do you have to clomp around like that? So I quit the crew team before the first regatta. Because of the morning practices, because of Rachel, because my body was beginning to feel separate from itself, an abandoned ship marked by an enthusiastic if waning flag.
But then! Rachel’s alarm--Rachel preferred the radio---began at 6 (I’m going swimming at 6, Rachel said) and continued for hours, every 9 minutes, another snooze, another painful pop song. Sometimes the alarm didn’t wake her up, and I'd yell: Rachel! To which Rachel responded, on a good day, with something like I know! or on a worse day, I’m fucking going swimming! or on a really bad day: It’s not as bad as your fucking alarm and you clomping like a horse, like an elephant, like a goddamn tortoise, I’ve never seen a skinny girl make so much fucking noise!
One morning, our fight escalated til we were tearing through the house like tigers, leaping across banisters, between other people’s rooms, yelling, throwing around animal metaphors, any swear word that fit neatly between two other words. It ended at the bottom of the stairwell, I looked at her eyes: they flashed with hate. Then, as if on cue, we both started crying.
But we never explain
why we treasure our secrets.
We're in love with our sadness sometimes.
-Chris Pureka, "Cruel and Clumsy"
why we treasure our secrets.
We're in love with our sadness sometimes.
-Chris Pureka, "Cruel and Clumsy"
Rachel had bleached hair and big eyes and wrote dirty brilliant poems. I told my friends on the phone: Eyes that get big, like a frog’s, when she is mad. She can be quite beautiful, I told them, and also quite frightening.
So I packed up a backpack and stayed in my friends’ dormitory for a week. A trial separation. I called myself a “hobo.” It was a joke. I slept with Amber, cuddled up next to her: she slept in tights and dresses and had dinner at 4 A.M. Sometimes we'd go to "The Grill" and wait for the cookies to come out of the oven, then lick them off our fingers while they were still hot and moist and perfect. I'd fall asleep before Amber, but sometimes we fell asleep together. She kept a list of all the boys she'd kissed on her nightstand.
Rachel and I both started smoking but didn't tell each other. We shared an ashtray.
In Amber's dorm, there was no yelling, only smoking and parties. At the end of my week as a hobo, my mother visited and I relished the sanctuary of a hotel. I slept on a cot and it felt like paradise. I felt ready to return to my room, prepared for more yelling, for more half-asleep fights, to pillows thrust across rooms, to unbearable alarm clocks.
Two weeks later, I told my Don I was to dropping out of college and moving to New York City, to take time off before I lost my mind. Because I had friends in the city, because I was on the Slim-Fast diet, literally, but also underweight, because what I did eat I quickly got rid of, because I knew there was no reason for this besides that I wasn't happy and needed to leave.
I wanted to be in the city, anyhow. That's where I'd wanted to go to school.
"I just can't take this like, little fake world on a hill," I told my Don.
"That's called 'going to a Liberal Arts College," He told me.
"Well, I guess I don't want to do that then," I told him.
He told me I was the best student, the most promising writer, he'd had in years, that it'd be a huge mistake to leave. Yes: he extracted a can of gasoline from his pocket, he threw it recklessly around my fire and then turned his head when it started burning I hate white rabbits I hate white rabbits.
And Behold! Ryan! After two weeks of ignoring me completely because I'd disobeyed him by attending a play he was in [he thought it was bad, and my opinion mattered too much to risk things], Ryan told me: Marie, I'm coming with you. I'm moving to the city with you. And we did. We got a bunk bed. Sarah slept in the other room.
The name of Flashpapr's album: Do What You Must Do.
Rachel decided to move back home to Philadelphia to dance, because she didn’t like the dancing at Sarah Lawrence. Because she felt fat. Because her family, she reminded me, is in Philly.
We left behind an empty room, poster putty like melted fossils of a half-started life. We left with our reasons for leaving.
This's Sarah2 and I. I'm like "Whatever, SLC!" and she's like "Whatevs, Tufts!"
So just like that: lickity split, decided to go home, even though I used to tell people I'd rather go to an all women's school in the middle of the desert than go back to Ann Arbor. But you never know, you know? You never know what you must do 'til you're doing it, sometimes.
And there is that sound again
The one you've been hearing for decades
Eternal laughter
Endlessly ghosts laughing at histories repeating
Them in you
Forever again
-Flashpapr, 'the air in my stomach'
The one you've been hearing for decades
Eternal laughter
Endlessly ghosts laughing at histories repeating
Them in you
Forever again
-Flashpapr, 'the air in my stomach'
Cause I never explain who's who:
1: Jake. Violin-player. Met in Ann Arbor, MI at Commie High. Colleged at Columbia in NYC, and, a little bit after that, moved to CA w/his girlfriend for music school. One of the best people I've ever known, hands-down totes.
2: Sarah. Harp-player. Met in Boarding School (Interlochen). She wanted to live in NYC real bad too, so I convinced her to drop out of Tufts and move there with me, so she did.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sunday Top Ten: How to Clerk in SubUrbia While Biting Reality in the Mall
"Somewhere around 25, bizarre becomes immature."
-Janet, Singles
-Janet, Singles
Generation X-ers who preferred The Couch, the poorly-tuned guitar and marijuana to "jobs" and "stable relationships" spawned a sub-genre known as the "slacker movie." These films, best enjoyed when you're in high school and it all seems so far-far away, characterized the unemployed/underachieving twentysomething as a beer-guzzling, television-watching, psychic-hotline-calling, mall-crawling, pot-smoking, shampoo-foregoing, ironic-vintage-t-shirt-wearing quasi-hipster who spends 95% of their time tucking their hair behind their ears and pontificating: "There's no point to any of this. It's all just a ... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details ..." [Troy, Reality Bites], or "I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory ... and I didn't have a good time" [Otis, Kicking and Screaming] or "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." [Brodie, Mallrats] [Unfortunately, I repeated that one many times, usually re: Tony Hawk.]Basically, if you, as I did, watched Mallrats, Clerks, Reality Bites, Kicking and Screaming, Suburbia, Singles and Empire Records, in one year, your life goal became something like this: Don't be Brodie. Just like: do anything but that. Don't be Winona Ryder on the phone with Miss Cleo. Don't work retail. Don't buy 95% of your groceries at the 7-11.
Most of my peers have chosen traditional escape from the risk of Slackerdom: employment. However, I've long suspected my productivity would, in fact, INCREASE without employment. Due to this succession of events ...
1. The Great Article-Kill of '07 (P.S. I read the mag today, quickly determined: the kill is this woman's fault.)
2. My Girlfriend Getting Mugged and Beaten, thus landing her in the hospital--and obvs I had to visit daily, bear gifts, etc.
3. The fact that I'm moving this weekend ...
... I can't really start a job right this moment. This does not, however, mean I'm becoming Brodie. I don't even know how to play video games, except Mario Kart. I used to like Jeopardy for Nintendo till I learned all the "questions." I didn't have a Nintendo (obviously they were forbidden in the No-Yellow-05-Zone), my friends did.
I've been working at least part-time since I was 14, which's when I made Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta Salad, mopped floors and stole cookies for $4.75/hour ... so, despite what I see as remarkable productivity, I'm applying for jobs AS WE SPEAK. In the meantime, this is how the hours have gone by:
1. Revising my Resume:
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE, COLLEGE GRADUATES!:
Charlane: Why don't you get a job at the Burger-rama? They'll hire you.
Lelania: Because I was the Valedictorian of my University!
Tom: Well, you don't have to put that on your application.
(Reality Bites)
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE, COLLEGE GRADUATES!:
Charlane: Why don't you get a job at the Burger-rama? They'll hire you.
Lelania: Because I was the Valedictorian of my University!
Tom: Well, you don't have to put that on your application.
(Reality Bites)
It's always good to revise one's resume. You can look at it and think, Where've I been? And then, Where am I going? Personally, I'm going to CRAIGSLIST! I'm convinced "items wanted" is the best place to make money, not "part time" or "writing gigs." Like, I'm certain someone's hunting for promo-copies of The L Word Season Four. JK; Mica from Showtime, I'd never do that. [P.S. Rumor has it, no Papi next season. Also, the show in general will be very bad. That part's not in the press release, I'm just guessing.]
2. Reading, Mega-Ancient and Contemporary Catch-Up
STAY LITERATE: "If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini."
(Chet, Kicking and Screaming)
STAY LITERATE: "If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini."
(Chet, Kicking and Screaming)
Including: Girlbomb (by Janice Erlbaum, reminded me of Blake Nelson's Girl, reads super-fast and smooth and breaks easy into brilliance when you least expect it to), Revelation (BEHOLD!), Collected Works of Rilke, "Thunder Perfect Mind" [I am the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, I am the Best and Worst Girlfriend Ever], dream whip issue no.14, Gospel of John, Exodus, Plato's Allegory of the Cave in Republic, Socrates' speeches in his own defense [Apology, Phaedrus, Crito], Thomas Szasz's "The Myth of Mental Illness," The Dharmabuddha, and begun A.M. Homes' The Mistress' Daughter, The Paris Review Interviews Vol. 1, Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle and the Torah. And of course, more than one magazine and newspaper, and many podcasts (This American Life, The Planet Cast At Last!, NPR Shuffle, Fresh Air, The Rabbi-Cast, Grammar Girl, etc.).
3. A Confession:
THE ODDEST SENTIMENTS ENDURE: "Let's save our Hallmark Moment."
(Deb, Empire Records)
THE ODDEST SENTIMENTS ENDURE: "Let's save our Hallmark Moment."
(Deb, Empire Records)
I'm watching Jennifer Hudson and Patti LaBelle do some serious justice to Nobody Knows at the GLAAD media awards on logo right now while I eat my sushi and um ... cry.
4. Meeting the Parents:
STAY PRESENTABLE, BE A GROWN-UP: "On prom night at the hotel when you told me to sleep under the bed in case your mother burst in, I did it. And even during my grandmother's funeral when you told my relatives that you could see her nipples through her burial dress, I let that slide."
(Rene, Mallrats)
TB: "No massive black rims of eyeliner, no PDA (sidekicks or side-grabs), no swearing ... and uh ... don't say 'like' ..."
I got Town & Country-ed up to visit Westchester on a Spring Sunday, to sit on the water with big sea creatures on our plates, discuss topics intelligent enough for the 'rents to like me. Like how we color-coded our towels at The Macaroni Grill, and stuck filthy salad tongs in the salad bowls of our most annoying "Family" members at The Olive Garden [cause as TB's brother pointed out: when you're there, you're family]. Sophisticated. It went well. They liked me. Parents usually do like me. Also they usually want to feed me.STAY PRESENTABLE, BE A GROWN-UP: "On prom night at the hotel when you told me to sleep under the bed in case your mother burst in, I did it. And even during my grandmother's funeral when you told my relatives that you could see her nipples through her burial dress, I let that slide."
(Rene, Mallrats)
TB: "No massive black rims of eyeliner, no PDA (sidekicks or side-grabs), no swearing ... and uh ... don't say 'like' ..."
5. Manic Depression, Deep in my Soul:
DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE PLIGHT OF THE WORLD: "At least I admit that I don't know. I know that things are fucked up, beyond belief, and I have nothing original to say about it ..." (Jeff, SubUrbia)
DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE PLIGHT OF THE WORLD: "At least I admit that I don't know. I know that things are fucked up, beyond belief, and I have nothing original to say about it ..." (Jeff, SubUrbia)
As you read; I became wholly obsessed and horrified by that whole gun-killing-people-violence-thing. And could do nothing but yell about it, read MSNBC.com, rosie.com, watch The View, and read about gun control.
6.Whoops.
What's really funny is that as I've tried to write this blog post, I've started watching television for the first time this week [except for like, one tiny nibble of America's Next Top Model at Tara/Lainy's place. But that doesn't count 'cause we were having educated conversations at the same time. You know, like in Reality Bites.]7. P.S. This kid's the future:
FOREVER YOUNG:
Leliana: I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23.
Troy: Honey, all you have to be by the time you're 23, is yourself.
Lelaina: I don't know who that is anymore.
Troy: I do. And we all love her. I love her. She breaks my heart again and again. But I love her.
(Reality Bites)
FOREVER YOUNG:
Leliana: I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23.
Troy: Honey, all you have to be by the time you're 23, is yourself.
Lelaina: I don't know who that is anymore.
Troy: I do. And we all love her. I love her. She breaks my heart again and again. But I love her.
(Reality Bites)
Total chess genius. I used to know how to play chess. Now I stare at the board like it's Scrabble and wonder where did my mind go? And then I start to think about the answer to that question: I think it's related, somehow, to that game "Girl Talk." On 112th and Broadway, where Ahmad sells books, he, TB and others play chess, TB gets lesbionic with her acoustic guitar, strumming Hendrix and Zeppelin, while I read Dorothy Parker and Truman Capote interviews and we drink from hidden juice bottles on the sidewalk.
8. Another Day for You and Me in Paradise
GIVE BACK, Y'ALL: "I don't, I don't need money, man. I don't, I don't even need, I don't even need a future. I, I could knock out all of my teeth with a hammer. So what? You know, I could poke my eyes out. I'd still be alive, you know? At least I'd know that I was doing something real for two or three seconds, you know? It's all about fear and I'm not afraid anymore, man. Fuck it! Fuck fear!"
(Jeff, SubUrbia)
GIVE BACK, Y'ALL: "I don't, I don't need money, man. I don't, I don't even need, I don't even need a future. I, I could knock out all of my teeth with a hammer. So what? You know, I could poke my eyes out. I'd still be alive, you know? At least I'd know that I was doing something real for two or three seconds, you know? It's all about fear and I'm not afraid anymore, man. Fuck it! Fuck fear!"
(Jeff, SubUrbia)
My girlfriend's favorite hobby is taking long walks while giving money to homeless people. On Thursday night, we walked from 106th to Times Square, clutching spiked juice bottles, dashing under scaffolding to play tag, which's practically a metaphor for our relationship anyhow: You're it, you're it, no, now you're it ... knock knock ...
We met so many superheroes, veterans, strivers ... one of whom asked TB: Are you a chick? Or a dude? I thought you were a dude at first ... but are you a chick?
She laughed, gestured: totes breasts! Paused. But yeah, I was born a chick ... not into gender/labels, etc., though, y'know?
An Anna Wintour-ish looking woman coldly passed by, large tote-bag slamming into our backs, TB yelled, "It's okay, you got really important things to do in your Prada, yeah? You gotta go check your MySpace, yeah?"
Where Am I Going, Where Have I Been? [a book by Joyce Carole Oates: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? TB bought it at a street-stand for me (We gotta get something from the street-booksellers, support them, yeah? Pick something out? I always liked JCO, envied her productivity, suspected she was slightly un-human.]
For Your/My Reference, Previous hobbies of significant others include:
-"The Yankees!"-Watching The Big Lebowski in bed, eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos (which probably causes hypertension or cholera).
-Dating other girls.
-Beer Pong.
-Writing Gothic horror films with Joycean overtones, which we'd then shoot in the guest house on his ranch in Oklahoma, and I'd almost pee in my pants watching him select his little farm-boy outfits or when he made his Mom act like a possessed lunatic in Prairie-garb. Obvs, another one of his hobbies was dating boys.
-Dating other girls who happen to work summers as Ariel from The Little Mermaid in Disneyworld.
-Dating other girls who are still in high school.
-Watching whatever movie was showing at the United Artists theater [cause he had free passes, post-management-position] even when that movie was Mission to Mars. Once he made me pick between Pearl Harbor and The Animal. I picked the latter 'cause it was shorter.
-Going to Newfound Glory and Blink 182 concerts, where my BF would recklessly crowd-surf while I ate my fingernails and wished we were playing beer pong so I could pass out on an empty couch somewhere.
Obvs: I've grown/changed/matured as a person. A lot.
Also, while we're on the topic of me indirectly "giving back" ... we tried to go to this Darfur lecture at Columbia, because then we could save Darfur? But we couldn't find it, though we found someone TB lived with in John Jay in a Russian classroom.
Serendipity.
In conclusion, I have only this to say:
Why would I need 5-10 years of fact-checking experience to check facts for Forbes.com? How hard is it to check facts? This world is bogus, and mediabistro jobs in particular.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
And These Children That You Spit On
pre-i.
June 9th, 2006:
In one of many old-school blog posts that probably no-one read ['cept my brother & his friends, Haviland, and Lo, though likely not all the way through], I announced: "the apocalypse is totally nigh." My evidence: 1. that movie, Cars ? Weird. 2. Gay people want to get married and, for their honeymoons, kill people in Iraq [sarcasm]. 3. The government announced it was gonna troll for terrorists on MySpace.
Obvs, this practice is well underway. So like, watch out! This administration is super-good at stopping killers before they kill. Like, getting down to the marrow of the issue, etc.
And I wanted a Super Soaker really badly.
In our school's front lawn, kids executed massive games signaling the [then-timely] start of summer, wielding Byzantine bright-neon plastic tools designed aesthetically to imitate murder but physiologically to expel tiny sprays of harmless water. On the sidelines, growing groggy with sweat, I'd boil with resentment at my mother for enabling my exclusion. I boiled over other deprivations, too: Nintendo, GI Joe, Lethal Weapon, He-Man--whatever the other kids had. Surely, I thought, the anger I feel over not getting a SuperSoaker would be best cured by a good go-round with a SuperSoaker.
[Side note: Two weeks ago at Le Monde, I totally threw a glass of water at TB/Tara. See! You can make your own wet projectile! And then run from the restaurant as fast as you can!]
Now my aversion to violence is so thick, so true--that despite all that remembered resentment, I can't imagine giving my child a water gun. Not even 'cause I think violent toys make violent kids [I don't think it would've made a difference with me necessarily], but just because the concept makes my stomach hurt. I know what you're thinking: YOU? Have a child? You can barely take care of yourself, Auto-Win!
And let me just say: I'm pregnant. Just kidding! [Impossible!] But if I was, I'd be like "Junior/Juniorette, squirt guns are for J-Ro and Jim-Bob down the street, those 8-year-old pudgettes who drink Natty Light and do perverted things to their Little Bratz dolls and have birthday parties at Long John Silvers. Let's go play with our Lincoln Logs and pick apples."
I mean, violence: not fun/entertaining to me. Is it fun to other people? Is it so fun that we can put it on TV all the time, like anything else, like 30-seconds-for-mass-murder, 30-seconds for HEAD-ON-APPLY-DIRECTLY-TO-THE-FOREHEAD, 30-seconds for a Dancing with the Stars preview? And then make it really easy to buy guns? But really hard to buy birth control? Because, after all, when the censorship powers-that-be wield their misled campaigns, they equate sex [sex. which, unlike guns, is essentially an act of .. um .. LOVE!] with violence.
As my girlfriend (who's getting out of the hospital today after being beaten and mugged on Chrisopher Street) said better than I can, there are certain problems with over-exposing oneself to sexual imagery and language. These problems are, in my words: saturation in sexual words/images takes some of the fun/mystery/passion out of it. But that's got no relation whatsoever to the dangers of over-exposure to violence.
So: "the [Virginia Tech gunman]s writing was 'macabre, twisted'"?" [knowing fully 85% of Americans have no clue what "macabre" means?] Boo.
This morning on The View, Barbara told Rosie that it made her "sad" to see Rosie admit yesterday that it is not just "futile" but "impossible" to fight for gun control in this country. Rosie's response:
Rosie's one of a desperate few in the US with a voice and a forum who is moved so much by national/global PROBLEMS that it affects her, deeply, makes her depressed. We should all feel that way, and it makes me sad that people find that dangerous and/or irrelevant. She gives millions to charity and expresses a POV on daytime television that is desperately needed right now. Maybe I admire her so much because that's what I want to do: create a relationship with the mainstream through my non-controversial writing that eventually will earn me the "power" to speak out and be listened to by a lot of people--people on all sides of the political spectrum.
Everyone please rent This Film is Not Yet Rated thanks. And Bowling for Columbine, but since I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure you've already seen it. Also, the Free Press's website for the National Campaign for Media Reform.
I've not seen [and likely will never] the following "entertainments": Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Sopranos, Lethal Weapon, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Die Hard, any Jackie Chan or James Bond movies, Final Destination, Scarface, Braveheart, Friday the 13th, Mortal Kombat, video games. I think violence is awful and horrifying: I can't comprehend picking up a gun. But clearly this guy could. And he liked shooting that gun enough, once he got started, to do it over and over and over and, ultimately, kill 34 people.
Because irony is always, it seems, the last man standing: Virginia Tech's Department of Communication determined that "prolonged exposure to media violence can facilitate hostility indiscriminately." I'm not saying this kid was a violent-movie buff. All he had to do was turn on the television a few times, or like, exist, to be completely bombarded by imagery--out of context--that enabled him, at the very least, to know what kind of gun to purchase.
So, since we're censoring people this week for expressing damaging concepts on television, and we're seeing yet another product of our violent morally bankrupt culture march into his school and open fire, here's some things on television TODAY, Wednesday the 18th, that I think are also damaging and should be fired:
World's Wildest Police Chases:
I used to wonder "Who watches this show?" Then I met someone who does. So I'll tell you: young men who smoke pot and drive large vehicles, specifically those who I quoted in my last blog entry as claiming: "You can run from the cops if you know how to sit right, because my theory is: skipping is faster than running. You know, like Hercules, or like the horse?"
MORAL: Obvs, skipping is faster than running. So is driving your car really fast like you might kill other drivers [the other drivers are also in cars, so you can't see their faces, which means they aren't real. Like ice hockey, drag racing or video games].
I Love New York:
I'm sure you've also made this mistake. "Oh fun! A show about loving New York City!" This show is not about New York City. It's about a girl who calls herself "New York." I don't know why. I'm not sure why these dudes are competing to marry her, or why she once competed to marry Flava Flav, which's how she got this gig. I totes understand the Appeal of Camp (hello, America's Next Top Model! [don't ask me to defend that show though, 'cause I can't]) but why is this show always on? I'd offer more commentary, but after about ten seconds, I tried to strangle myself with my hoodie.
MORAL: If Flava Flav won't marry you, some other douchetard totes will. On television. And people'll watch. Which makes it important?
Whatever:
Right now, Pat Sajack is talking about winning a trip to Bermuda, while the news text-scroll on the bottom of the screen kindly informs us that 35 people were killed today in a Baghdad hospital.
MORAL: You too can win a trip to Bermuda! Don't think about Iraq! Don't think about Iraq! They aren't real people! They are people in Iraq! Iraq isn't real! BERMUDA, y'all! (Unless you're gay, in which case: don't think about Bermuda ).
Style Her Famous:
Summer, a busy Mom of 4, can have celebrity style. She too can look like Halle Berry, which will help relieve the burdens of single motherhood in a racist classist quasi-Democracy like America. The host is Jay Manuel (from America's Next Top Model), who's really annoying.
Plastic Surgery Nightmares:
So "E! Investigates" has cut together ominous action-movie music with blurry blue surgery footage, mixed it up with some interviews of the unlucky "patients" who got wronged by their plastic surgeons, and has created a two-hour television program. For the three minutes that I could bear to watch, a woman described almost dying from a botched tummy tuck/eyelid lift.
MORAL: There are many ways to risk ones life. If you're poor, you can be sent to Iraq. If you're not poor, you can get tummy tucks from sketchy doctors. If you're not poor, hate rich people, feel lonely and "twisted," you can create a "multimedia manifesto" about "rich, spoiled" students, and then shoot all your classmates and then yourself.
MORAL, ACCORDING TO E!: "Donna did her homework before picking her doctor, but it wasn't enough....next, a story of a woman who did NO research before choosing her plastic surgeon!"
June 9th, 2006:
In one of many old-school blog posts that probably no-one read ['cept my brother & his friends, Haviland, and Lo, though likely not all the way through], I announced: "the apocalypse is totally nigh." My evidence: 1. that movie, Cars ? Weird. 2. Gay people want to get married and, for their honeymoons, kill people in Iraq [sarcasm]. 3. The government announced it was gonna troll for terrorists on MySpace.
Obvs, this practice is well underway. So like, watch out! This administration is super-good at stopping killers before they kill. Like, getting down to the marrow of the issue, etc.
i. "It's stealth design delivers SHOCK and SURPRISE! AQUASHOCK LEVEL 3.0!"
In the early-nineties, my brother argued the "Educational Toy" cause and managed to procure a wooden sword from the Renaissance Festival in direct defiance of Mom's No-Violent-Stuff Rule, but we had no such case for Super-Soakers.
In the early-nineties, my brother argued the "Educational Toy" cause and managed to procure a wooden sword from the Renaissance Festival in direct defiance of Mom's No-Violent-Stuff Rule, but we had no such case for Super-Soakers.And I wanted a Super Soaker really badly.
In our school's front lawn, kids executed massive games signaling the [then-timely] start of summer, wielding Byzantine bright-neon plastic tools designed aesthetically to imitate murder but physiologically to expel tiny sprays of harmless water. On the sidelines, growing groggy with sweat, I'd boil with resentment at my mother for enabling my exclusion. I boiled over other deprivations, too: Nintendo, GI Joe, Lethal Weapon, He-Man--whatever the other kids had. Surely, I thought, the anger I feel over not getting a SuperSoaker would be best cured by a good go-round with a SuperSoaker.
[Side note: Two weeks ago at Le Monde, I totally threw a glass of water at TB/Tara. See! You can make your own wet projectile! And then run from the restaurant as fast as you can!]
Now my aversion to violence is so thick, so true--that despite all that remembered resentment, I can't imagine giving my child a water gun. Not even 'cause I think violent toys make violent kids [I don't think it would've made a difference with me necessarily], but just because the concept makes my stomach hurt. I know what you're thinking: YOU? Have a child? You can barely take care of yourself, Auto-Win!
And let me just say: I'm pregnant. Just kidding! [Impossible!] But if I was, I'd be like "Junior/Juniorette, squirt guns are for J-Ro and Jim-Bob down the street, those 8-year-old pudgettes who drink Natty Light and do perverted things to their Little Bratz dolls and have birthday parties at Long John Silvers. Let's go play with our Lincoln Logs and pick apples."
I mean, violence: not fun/entertaining to me. Is it fun to other people? Is it so fun that we can put it on TV all the time, like anything else, like 30-seconds-for-mass-murder, 30-seconds for HEAD-ON-APPLY-DIRECTLY-TO-THE-FOREHEAD, 30-seconds for a Dancing with the Stars preview? And then make it really easy to buy guns? But really hard to buy birth control? Because, after all, when the censorship powers-that-be wield their misled campaigns, they equate sex [sex. which, unlike guns, is essentially an act of .. um .. LOVE!] with violence.
As my girlfriend (who's getting out of the hospital today after being beaten and mugged on Chrisopher Street) said better than I can, there are certain problems with over-exposing oneself to sexual imagery and language. These problems are, in my words: saturation in sexual words/images takes some of the fun/mystery/passion out of it. But that's got no relation whatsoever to the dangers of over-exposure to violence.
So: "the [Virginia Tech gunman]s writing was 'macabre, twisted'"?" [knowing fully 85% of Americans have no clue what "macabre" means?] Boo.
ii. "If you're not angry, you're just stupid, you don't care, how else can you react when you know something's so unfair, when the man of the hour can kill half the world in war, make them slaves to a superpower and let them die poor?"
or: Why I love Rosie O'Donnell, and always will.
or: Why I love Rosie O'Donnell, and always will.This morning on The View, Barbara told Rosie that it made her "sad" to see Rosie admit yesterday that it is not just "futile" but "impossible" to fight for gun control in this country. Rosie's response:
I know. It made me sad, too, but it was really hard, you know? We did the "Million Mom March" after the 1999 Columbine shootings, I mean, everyone thought that would work. What else would it take besides pulling high school kids bloody out of a second floor window? What else would it take to get sensible gun legislation? No one wants to take away hunters rights to hunt. We just want to sort of have sensible gun laws. You know, a teddy bear has more regulations on it than a gun in terms of safety ... I do feel defeated. I have to tell you. When that happened yesterday, it felt like, well here we go again. You know, it’s like "The Truman Show" or "Groundhog Day." We just wake up, and it just continues, and continues.
Rosie's one of a desperate few in the US with a voice and a forum who is moved so much by national/global PROBLEMS that it affects her, deeply, makes her depressed. We should all feel that way, and it makes me sad that people find that dangerous and/or irrelevant. She gives millions to charity and expresses a POV on daytime television that is desperately needed right now. Maybe I admire her so much because that's what I want to do: create a relationship with the mainstream through my non-controversial writing that eventually will earn me the "power" to speak out and be listened to by a lot of people--people on all sides of the political spectrum.
iii. make love not war
People who censor, e.g. the MPAA, assess sex and violence as equally "damaging" and "immoral." That's like: one falsehood. From which to start. Figuring out how we got here.
Everyone is numb to violence, and so used to it, that it starts to seem like one of many ways for an unhappy kid to act out.
People who censor, e.g. the MPAA, assess sex and violence as equally "damaging" and "immoral." That's like: one falsehood. From which to start. Figuring out how we got here.Everyone is numb to violence, and so used to it, that it starts to seem like one of many ways for an unhappy kid to act out.
Everyone please rent This Film is Not Yet Rated thanks. And Bowling for Columbine, but since I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure you've already seen it. Also, the Free Press's website for the National Campaign for Media Reform.
I've not seen [and likely will never] the following "entertainments": Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Sopranos, Lethal Weapon, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Die Hard, any Jackie Chan or James Bond movies, Final Destination, Scarface, Braveheart, Friday the 13th, Mortal Kombat, video games. I think violence is awful and horrifying: I can't comprehend picking up a gun. But clearly this guy could. And he liked shooting that gun enough, once he got started, to do it over and over and over and, ultimately, kill 34 people.
Because irony is always, it seems, the last man standing: Virginia Tech's Department of Communication determined that "prolonged exposure to media violence can facilitate hostility indiscriminately." I'm not saying this kid was a violent-movie buff. All he had to do was turn on the television a few times, or like, exist, to be completely bombarded by imagery--out of context--that enabled him, at the very least, to know what kind of gun to purchase.
v.
I know: I'm supposed to make jokes. What do I know about anything? Who am I to speak of such things? [No-one! That's the point, I think? I am no-one, just like everyone with the ability to speak?] I will make jokes, I promise! Y'know how most people [with hearts/souls] have a "thing" that really gets to them? A specific "news-worthy" event that makes them totally insane? That's me, with respect to school shootings.vi.
So, since we're censoring people this week for expressing damaging concepts on television, and we're seeing yet another product of our violent morally bankrupt culture march into his school and open fire, here's some things on television TODAY, Wednesday the 18th, that I think are also damaging and should be fired:
World's Wildest Police Chases:
I used to wonder "Who watches this show?" Then I met someone who does. So I'll tell you: young men who smoke pot and drive large vehicles, specifically those who I quoted in my last blog entry as claiming: "You can run from the cops if you know how to sit right, because my theory is: skipping is faster than running. You know, like Hercules, or like the horse?"
MORAL: Obvs, skipping is faster than running. So is driving your car really fast like you might kill other drivers [the other drivers are also in cars, so you can't see their faces, which means they aren't real. Like ice hockey, drag racing or video games].
I Love New York:
I'm sure you've also made this mistake. "Oh fun! A show about loving New York City!" This show is not about New York City. It's about a girl who calls herself "New York." I don't know why. I'm not sure why these dudes are competing to marry her, or why she once competed to marry Flava Flav, which's how she got this gig. I totes understand the Appeal of Camp (hello, America's Next Top Model! [don't ask me to defend that show though, 'cause I can't]) but why is this show always on? I'd offer more commentary, but after about ten seconds, I tried to strangle myself with my hoodie.
MORAL: If Flava Flav won't marry you, some other douchetard totes will. On television. And people'll watch. Which makes it important?
Whatever:
Right now, Pat Sajack is talking about winning a trip to Bermuda, while the news text-scroll on the bottom of the screen kindly informs us that 35 people were killed today in a Baghdad hospital.
MORAL: You too can win a trip to Bermuda! Don't think about Iraq! Don't think about Iraq! They aren't real people! They are people in Iraq! Iraq isn't real! BERMUDA, y'all! (Unless you're gay, in which case: don't think about Bermuda ).
Style Her Famous:
Summer, a busy Mom of 4, can have celebrity style. She too can look like Halle Berry, which will help relieve the burdens of single motherhood in a racist classist quasi-Democracy like America. The host is Jay Manuel (from America's Next Top Model), who's really annoying.
Jay: "Look at you."MORAL: I've got no clue.
Summer: "Look at me! Who is this person in the mirror?"
Jay: "It's the new Summer. That's all I can say."
Plastic Surgery Nightmares:
So "E! Investigates" has cut together ominous action-movie music with blurry blue surgery footage, mixed it up with some interviews of the unlucky "patients" who got wronged by their plastic surgeons, and has created a two-hour television program. For the three minutes that I could bear to watch, a woman described almost dying from a botched tummy tuck/eyelid lift.
MORAL: There are many ways to risk ones life. If you're poor, you can be sent to Iraq. If you're not poor, you can get tummy tucks from sketchy doctors. If you're not poor, hate rich people, feel lonely and "twisted," you can create a "multimedia manifesto" about "rich, spoiled" students, and then shoot all your classmates and then yourself.
MORAL, ACCORDING TO E!: "Donna did her homework before picking her doctor, but it wasn't enough....next, a story of a woman who did NO research before choosing her plastic surgeon!"
MORAL, ACCORDING TO ME!:
1. (the apocalypse is nigh?)
2. "but there come times--perhaps this is one of them--when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die; when we have to pull back from the incantations, rhythms we've moved to thoughtlessly."
-Adrienne Rich
1. (the apocalypse is nigh?)
2. "but there come times--perhaps this is one of them--when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die; when we have to pull back from the incantations, rhythms we've moved to thoughtlessly."
-Adrienne Rich
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