Auto-Fun of the Day :: 6-5-2008

FYI, our advice column is totally gonna rock! We're going to change people's lives, like Sally Jessie Raphael and Joni Mitchell. Our first installment is coming together as we speak. Keep sending your questions to askautowin@yahoo.com!

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quote: "At a time when increasing numbers of women were demanding the right to take up more space in the world it is no surprise that they'd be hit with the opposite message from a culture that was (and still is) both male-dominated and deeply committed to its traditional power structures. Women get psychically larger, and they're told to grow physically smaller. Women begin to play active roles in realms once dominated by men (schools, universities, athletic fields, the workplace, the bedroom), and they're countered with images of femininity that infantilize them, render them passive and frail and non-threatening. The female body is the place where this society writes it's messages, writes Rosalind Coward in Female Desires. A response to feminism was etched with increasing clarity on the whittled-down silhouette of the average American model: Don't get too hungry, don't overstep your bounds." (Caroline Knapp, "Appetites")

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links:
1) I thought this was a good article, but then I read this: New Yorker Film Critic Anthony Lane Has Female Trouble, and so now I take it back. Per always/often, Jezebel is right ... or, rather, I am wrong. (@jezebel)
2) "Every theory we have about the human world and about the future is vulnerable to the black swan, the unexpected event. We sail in fragile vessels across a raging sea of uncertainty." Fun!: Nassim Nicholas Taleb - the prophet of boom and doom. (@times uk)
3) So You Want to Write a Memoir?: "Make sure your life hasn't already been lived." They've catalogued addictions, trauma, diseases, disorders, family , foodstuffs, religion, upbringing, employment, travel, etc. Really, an extraordinary list ... read it. (@ew.com)

''The bar keeps going higher,'' says Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. ''Well, you were a drug addict, but did you kill anybody? Well, you killed somebody, but did you do it with your bare hands? Well, you were hungry, but were you as hungry as Frank McCourt? The more that's written, the harder it is to come up with something new or dramatic to say.''

4) Finally a movie-to-musical adaptation that makes sense -- Saved! the musical. (@culture vulture)
5) Fuck SATC -- The entire series of Absolutely Fabulous is now available on DVD. (@afterellen)
6) From "Next-Door Neighbor: A Series of True-Life Webcomix Featuring Today's Best Artists and Writers" - "My Neighbor the Dickhead" by Ed Piskor (@smith magazine)
7) The beauty of shared items -- Alex shared this, then I shared this, then LK shared this -- howevs, I still can't get any of these wallpapers to actually download. Rawr! Desktop Wallpaper Calender: June (@smashing magazine)
8) Three Poems: Focal point of repeated ekphrastic stanza, A least feast, An image play: Center Stage, by Bob Hicok. (@Fou)
9) "Women's Studies" Does the fairer sex need its own instructions on how to do ... everything? (bookslut @the smart set)
10) Illustration from Anne de Renzis

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 6-3-2008

quote: "The more withered the reality, the more gigantic and tyrannical the dream. From the dark hole of a bar on a street of sickness and whores comes a teeming cloud of music sparkling with warmth and glamour: Sweet dreams of rhythm and magic-- Look in and see dark dead blurs slumped on stools." (Veronica, Mary Gaitskill.)

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links: 1) Okay, now The New York Times Magazine has officially gone from being controversial to just being weird. This Sunday's cover story: Tyra Banks. Good thing she doesn't have any tattoos or ex-boyfriends. (@the new york times magazine)
2) The Coffee Junkie's Guide to Caffeine Addiction (@nymag)
3) A surprisingly eloquent article about Angelina Jolie. With links to a retrospective of prior articles including one from 2005 which she states: "Men don't really like skinny, do they? Ever since I dated a woman, I know what it is to grab a curve on a woman's body. Skinny's not fine when the lights are low." (@vanity fair)
4) The Book Collection That Devoured My Life: "I'm not a snob about books, but I'm probably a show-off -- as who isn't? My showing-off is of a pretty low-key if not completely abstruse sort, though ... it's rather a closed circle; I impress myself." (@wsj)
5) My neighbors smoke crack on my stoop, but apparently the real problem worthy of immediate legal action is when your neighbor is a "bohemian" woman offering tantric massage. Goddess Bless America. Let the woman spread the tantra! Damn the Man! (@sexpros)
6) RKB talks to The Reality-Cast (RH Reality Check: Information and Analysis for Reproductive Health) about the links between feminism and erotica and her new book Dirty Girls! The podcast also covers an NY sex ed battle involving the crazy pro-abstinentence people, gay couples celebrating their new rights, etc. From the podcast, RKB is talking about "Fucking Around, " AKA MY story!!!:

"It's really beautiful, and what I love about it is that it almost makes me cry when you read it, but it's also really sexy. And anyone who can do all of those things; who can make you laugh and can make you cry and can really turn you on ... is a really good writer."
-RKB, talking about memememeemememe

7) Poem: "Dearborn Suite" by Phillip Levine: "Henry, master of Dearborn, / who loathes sharing the light / with the unenlightened among us." (@the new yorker)
8) "Chances are, if you came of age in the '90s and have an even glancing relationship to music, you made your fair share of mix tape for various friends and lovers. If those parties reciprocated, and if you are a pack rat, their lovingly curated compilations are probably still in storage somewhere in your home. Go dig one up ... let the aforementioned wistfulness wash over you."Mix Tape Nostalgia"(@utne reader)
9) "The tip of the tongue state" occurs once a week: "What's That Name?" (@the boston globe)
10) "It’s not just about bodies, or running time, of course but of dramatic scope, theatrical invention and sheer entertainment value. “August” is a big play in just about every way.": "The Big Cast, Bigger Canvas, of Broadway" (@the ny times)

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most recenct autowin: "It's 4 AM and your girl is lovely, hubble (Obligatory SATC Post)"
[all photos by julia fullerton-batten. see more of her work : here.]

It's 4 AM on a Monday Morning and Your Girl is Lovely, Hubble. (Obligatory SATC movie post)

[UPDATE: Somehow this published last night without the last two paragraphs. Sorz .. Fixed now.]

*

I saw the colors and the wind in their skirts; four women clompity-clomping down a sidewalk and the sheer power of their power seemed like parting seas. I saw Carrie perched like a cat at the edge of her bed, typity-typing words that were just for us to eat up like bon-bons stuffed with both alcohol and fortunes. We could crack open our sweetest spots and inside we could read: "Do mistakes make our fate?" "Do we ever give up the ghosts of relationships past?" Then we'd eat our cookies and the sweetness would stick to our teeth.

I believed those were our sweetest spots: "Is it smarter to follow your heart or your head?" "Is hope a drug we need to go off of, or does it keep us alive?" Our sweetest spots weren't what we'd suspected (animals wanting their bellies scratched, or food), they were what we'd hoped (a drug that keeps us alive).

And then; we could eat our cookies.

And, in Michigan, alone at night-time when I'd feel like an alien accidentally born on the wrong planet, I'd watch this show called Sex and the City on DVD and I'd write in my journal: ONE DAY YOUR LIFE WILL BE FAR MORE FABULOUS THAN THIS. I'd cut out magazine pictures of women in powersuits and paste them into my journal and draw pictures with colored pencils. A boy would call and I'd glance benevolently at his name on the ID and sigh at how silly and small he was compared to this city. He was insignificant and mean, I was clompity-clomp and mean, he'd eat my dust like an expensive bon-bon and it would taste like my mouth and then I'd bite his hand.

I saw the sex. I saw the city which got dark and dirty at night -- teeeming with prostitutes and puddles and heartbreak and shoe-break. I saw these things only -- the way the word "brunch" sounds like "french," like french kissing, or french toast. I heard other sounds too; women laughing, the self-assured lilt of Samantha's unapologetic lust, full of pride and self-reliance and hunger. I heard Charlotte's lips twisting in prudish neurotic adorable Charlottehood. I felt Miranda's eyes rolling far far away and then reluctantly returning to the table like someone who'd just eaten your fourtune without reading it and then offered you a really good book in exchange.

I heard Miranda; "We're four smart women with jobs and men is all we can talk about? It's like seventh grade with bank accounts." I thought; true story. I thought; let's talk about women instead. Let's talk about other kinds of desire, the kind we already understand but maybe don't know what to do with yet. Not these strange games and boundaries, where closets and rings mean more than poetry.

"Carrie" was right about one thing -- it is our mistakes that make our fate. And that's got nothing to do with mistakes and a lot more to do with fate. We've all got the same one, and maybe we come here to escape it. And if we don't come here -- to this immortal city -- it doesn't matter. What we come here for is the same exact feeling that every person everywhere feels through fucking or through drugs or through a car speeding through a clean night or through laughter or the kind of love you can't put on a keychain or in a newspaper or on a blog.

Through the moments when stars looked like bright lights, big cities. Through silence. We came here 'cause we wanted it double, which means paying double too.

Here, here, here, this city. Its lights and garish billboards of women selling shampoo like shampoo is secretly a blow job from a girl made out of candy and colors. Women selling underwear like underwear is sex or a city or sex in a city or women on magazine covers, the sides of busses, is women still making less than men but fighting just the same. Is women made immortal by the ambivalent wave of an airbrush, like photographs are magicians and women are bunnies with their ears pert and open. And also by the dirty things women don't talk about, by the compromises.

This is New York City: sex isn't always a soundbyte, isn't how Samantha comes like she's warning the neighborhood. Sex is not always brunch or french.

Sex is not always coloring though sometimes it is. Sometimes it's like the colorful dresses the girls wore in the movie and the show that I liked when I used to have dreams like balloons that kept getting bigger as long as you remained willing to blow.

Sometimes sex is like touching someone's skin with your fingertip and feeling that you've accidentally split their lungs right open and then saying "It's okay, I can teach you how to breathe." It's saying, "trust me," and then leading them underground with one finger latched into their finger and a darkness only you understand.
It's saying "look me in the eyes and tell me how much you like me," and then crawling inside of that feeling like it's a swimming pool you can sleep in without drowning. You can just dream and kiss forever after all.

Is like hitting someone in the face, or just wanting to.

And sometimes sex is a strong hand on the back of your skull, is a moment when you close your eyes and think about ponies and pudding and the sound of your best friend laughing and licking frosting off the spoon while your mother makes cake and you are small and far away. It's thinking these things until it's over and you're still gasping for air and then later, alone in Manhattan at night, walking towards wheels to take you home, you'll hold a cigarette tenderly to your lips to remind yourself that sometimes you can choose the kind of death you let inside you. It's how easily smoke covers his smell and every smell you've ever smelled.

It's the relief of a night where no one gives a shit, where you could drown in a puddle or a pool of pudding.

And the city ?

Is work. Is women working their assess off as if we never took back any kind of night. Is everything that happened after the year 2000 when we realized actually none of us had the right to vote. The city is women working in big, hulking, angry buildings that raise triumphant and phallic into the sky. Is women winning and losing and giving up and leaving and winning and auto-winning some.

Is Samantha in Richard's office, determined to get the account. Is Miranda. Is everything about Miranda until the movie. Is the episode when all four women admit they've been taking care of themselves for a long time, and they aren't really necessarily ready to let someone else take that part over. The film at times felt like women begging for someone else to take over, clinging to prior independence like an illness they couldn't shake. Not 'cause they were tired -- which I fully understand-- but because it just wasn't so important, not as important as keychains and purses.

In the finale, I cried when Big said; "You three are the real loves of her life." Did you? And I wanted a moment in the movie like that. Some were close -- the girls shuffling Carrie into the car outside the library (I'm trying to refrain from spoilers) -- but I wanted one step closer. Clickity-clack, and how do they feel about Carrie's book? How's she doing?

**

I came here expecting that kind of life and it hasn't been that way at all -- not even for one minute. I came here expecting lessons and shiny shoes and the colors. Tutus. Pillows like apologies and/or hugs and a world where women could have their cake and make it, too. Men like tiny snacks on little pieces of bread. Clackity-clack go the women on the street. Typity-type on the computer.

I'd never understood why people got upset that TV characters had unrealistically large Manhattan apartments, like Rachel Green in Friends. It's teevee, I thought, who cares? It isn't real, we all know that. Who cares?

I guess ... I did. I cared. I believed in Sex and the City.

And watching the film, I couldn't help but wonder ... how, exactly, does Carrie manage to write about her sex life in a weekly column and regularly publish mysteriously profitable books while managing to avoid that occupation's two elemental repercussions:
1) conflict over writing intimately about the lives of her friends, lovers, and friend's lovers.
2) financial struggles.

The L Word unquestionably cloaks characters in Free City, but it's easier to swallow Shane's $200 t-shirts than Carrie's shoes 'cause we literally see Carrie shop. It's part of her character. She cabs, she brunches, and -- most enviable of all --- lives alone in a nice neighborhood in Manhattan while putting in approximately two hours of work per week.

I came here expecting that but with no real “plan” for obtaining it. I wanted movie magic. Did Carrie have a plan? Did you?

The only part of a wedding I ever got excited over was picking bridesmaids, and thinking about a dress I could wear that'd piss everyone off besides whatever woman had agreed to marry me, and that woman would think the dress was sexy.

What happened when she'd put out three books divulging all her personal failures, put it out there for everyone, and was still the only one without a savings account? Did anyone care that she wrote about them? Did Gawker cover the Vogue fallout? How, how, how ... I wanted to see Carrie's plan, the overlap of the personal and the professional. Her body, her self.

**

"So here I was, a 35-year-old single woman with no financial security, but many life experiences behind me. Did that mean nothing? After all, heartbreak and breakups are the hardest kind of work. So shouldn't there be some sort of credit for enduring them? And if not, how do you retain a sense of value when you have nothing concrete to show for it? Because at the end of yet another failed relationship, when all you have are war wounds and self-doubt, you have to wonder, what's it all worth?"

-Carrie Bradshaw, episode 64, "Ring a Ding Ding"

[Howevs -- she has $40,000 of shoes. In the Book of Riese, ebay gold star seller, those be some assets, SRSLY.]

I came here wanting experience ... and rewards for experience ... at at times, I've had it!

I've had moments that make me jealous of myself and they all felt like magic and gifts. Almost everything I've gotten here has been through magic and love and things I deem unquestionably real, deserved.

This isn't a good long-term plan 'cause magic comes and goes but 9-to-5 jobs are forever, but luckily I believe very strongly in the moment and try not to think about next week.

As for financial security and white knights ... I guess I was looking for a different kind of rock. For what I loved about the show and loved for those brief, multi-colored moments in the film when the four girls rounded the corner and they could've been twenty or two hundred, what mattered was they had each other and they had themselves. Which matters to me more than any kind of deep deep closet.

**

We saw the movie on opening night in Chelsea at midnight. A drag queen introduced the movie. I raised my hand when he said "Who's a Miranda?" Miranda didn't believe in jackshit. 50% of the theater -- mostly gay men -- cheered for "Who's a Samantha?"

I was entertained and delighted and sometimes moved to tears. I had to hide under my hoodie a few times when it got too cheesy -- most scenes involving J-Hud, or when our dear Stef, fully wasted, punctuated her favourite moments rock-show-style with a scream and a fist in the air. But I believe in that, too.

**

I didn't come here expecting to give up men altogether, I didn't come here expecting anything that I got. I may've come here expecting the precise opposite of all this in which case yes, my mistakes did make my fate except I don't believe in fate. I believe in many silly things, but not that.

As for this city and what it's got that I believe in; I believe in love, and I believe in Caitlin and I believe in Alexandra (though they don't live in the city proper, 'cause no one does anymore) and Natalie, and I believe in music and I believe in english muffins and Team Emily and words and books. In art. In everyone who lives here that I love and who will walk down the street with me in Chuck Taylors.

As for that silly movie -- I found Charlotte charming, Samantha oddly bearable, Miranda not pleasant though she's usually my favorite, and Carrie -- I don't know. I liked the fashion show in her closet. I liked the moments that reminded me of 80's movies about cute girls in suburbs who wanted to have fun. I was thoroughly entertained. I didn't like the parts where strong women had nothing else to talk about besides men.

What I love about SATC the show, and what changed my life while I thought I was watching love stories and colors in fabric, was that it challenged my perceptions of the centrality female friendship could hold in one's life. Prior to SATC and TLW, most onscreen female friendships were a series of Brenda and Kelly esque catfights -- competitions over boys or cheerleading squad, etc.

This was embodied in Carrie's walk to Miranda's apartment in the movie -- so totally bogus, and yet so beautiful. And the snow. And the city and the sex inside it and all over it. The places we dream of, the places we can't bear to be found.

Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that split you right open like the heart is just another fruit and those that yank you from your present and drop you mercilessly into the feelings of someone you thought you'd left behind. There's those that remind you of where you were, those that help you get where you're going, those that make you think you've got it all wrong and those that lift a heavy gate revealing something right and full of color. There's those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.

Auto-Fun of the Day :: 5-30-2008

I still don't know how to use Final Cut, but I gave it my all -- the Logo NewNowNext Awards Red Carpet Video is up on youtube: (1) Part One & Part Two. It's also up on The L Word Online's video page.

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quote: "Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are the people who are unable to connect with the profound -- people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminiates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. I wonder if some day, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and he will cry with regret and shame and grief." (Douglass Coupland, "Life After God.")

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links:
2) Jenny Allen is The Sleepless Woman -- "I fall asleep, boom, and then, four or five hours later, I wake up—like it’s my turn on watch, like I’ve just had a full night’s sleep. But if I act as if I’ve had a full night’s sleep, if I get up and do things, I will be pitiful tomorrow. I will confuse the TV remote with the cordless phone and try to answer it. I will not notice any of my typos—I will type “pubic school” this and “pubic school” that in e-mails to people whose public schools I am looking at for my daughter.": I'm Awake. Are You Awake? (@the new yorker)
3) This article reminded me of what happened with me & [redacted] magazine ... except my story never ran. [blessing in disguise, in so many ways.]: "The Times Magazine dapples Sunlight On Its Memoirist." (@the ny observer)
4) Jeanette Winterson interviewed for the Sydney Writer's Festival (@sydney morning herald)
5) "What is it about designers? Who are we and why are we the way we are?" Because they're cute, obvs! : "Defining the Designer" (@viget inspire)
6) RKB interviews Kerry Cohen on publishing and her "memoir of promiscuity" (@lusty lady)
7) Video games might not be that bad for you, but I still don't want to watch you play them. (@the prospect)
8) We'll find out tonight! "If SATC the series was promotions heavy, SATC the movie is positively heaving.": "Why retail hopes for Sex and the City won't pay off." (@slate.com).
8a) Classical Allusions in SATC: "Urban Mythology" (@radar)
9) "12 out writers share insights into the genres in which they tell their stories" -- this segment includes Sarah Waters and Rebecca Walker: In Their Own Words (@afterellen)
10) Hope! Hope! Now gays can get married in the sunshine, return to the trash and traffic, remain married: Paterson Sneaks Gay Marriage in Through the Back Door (@nymag)

It's a Top 10 List of Things that Move Me the Most, Bother Me the Most, Scare Me the Most

Leisurely reader: you don't need me to swear that I longed for this blog, born out of my little brain & navel, to be the most smokin' hot baby imaginable, the most purple, the most intelligent and quasi-intellectual. But could I contradict the natural order of things? Like creates like.

So what could my emotional, mediated/oft-intoxicated "wit" give birth to except the history of a hysterical child, over-metabolised, whining, its head stuffed with all kinds of thoughts no one else would even think of, like a girl bred in an emo cave of her own design, where everything grates on your nerves and every new sound (for example the men drilling giant holes on my sidewalk who woke me up this morning), makes you still sadder. Other circumstances (e.g., flying lesbians, L Word character development, fresh fruit, kind awakenings, tranquil spirit) would turn even the most sterile Muses fertile, filling the world with almost-hipsterish, consistent, honest and well-bred offspring. But instead ... we have Auto-Win. Who is here to celebrate.

Yes! Two years ago April 8th, in order to best allow you to make the acquaintance of such a noble/honorable knight, the celebrated Sancho/MLB [not major league baseball or the modern languages building] began writing a blog called "This Girl called Automatic Win." ¹

Actually, my motivations for beginning this blog, as I'm sure most of you know by now, isn't related to extolling virtues, it was 'cause my roommate/everything at the time (as in -- "everything a person can be to another person," including best friend & co-worker) (this is a common recipe for disaster) had a blog, and so I wanted a blog too. She had other things I wanted too, like rock-hard abs, black legwarmers, rhythm, a savings account, reasonably sized feet, a functional bicycle and usually a large bag of miniature candy bars. Aside from the legwarmers, which I took and still have, I couldn't have any of those things. But I could have A BLOG! I was very mature then, just as I'm very mature now, and I do not covet, just like Moses told me to. Actually, yeah I do.

[Also I haven't rocked the legwarmers in a while, 'cause I haven't worn a skirt and/or dress in a while, 'cause I have short hair now and I feel like girls with short hair in dresses always remind me of Seasons 1-3 Miranda. Miranda is obvs my favorite SATC character: she's got the best comebacks/one-liners, reminds me of me, and let's face it -- I'm no Charlotte, and Carrie & Samantha are annoying. Howevs, somehow her overall look's always suggested something self-consciously "power-wifey," like the "Before" Nicole Kidman in The Stepford Wives remake or a female newscaster from the early 90's w/shoulderpads or a politician. You know what I mean? Mainly, the thing is that I'm 26, not 46 or even 36. I don't expect to live past 56, so I've gotta harvest my rosebuds while I may, etc.

The point is that starting around Season Four, Cynthia Nixon's undoubtable hotness finally came out of the closet via a new improved haircut that suited her overall look and the format of television itself quite well:

Does everyone get my point? How'd I start talking about Miranda? Oh yes. Skirts --> legwarmers ---> blog.]

So I've been trying to think of a Sunday Top Ten topic that relates to the Second Bloggiversary without being like a VH1 special for myself. Like you know they're just ACHING at VH1 for 2010 so they can start filming "We Love the Aughts." I'd pondered "Top Ten Moments on My Blog of the Last Year," or something equally self-obsessed ... but I did already do a Best of the Top Tens post, and a few Year in Review posts, so really, how much more can I possibly indulge in the self-reflexive navel-gazing related instant nostalgia you've come to expect here at Auto-Win?

OMG, So Much More!!!!

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Sunday Top Ten: All The Top Tens I Thought About Writing In Honor of the Bloggiversary, But Then, Obvs Didn't
[Or, "The Soul's Agents"]
[Or, "An Autowin Buffet! Something for Everyone!]

[This post isn't going to flow upon your readership perfectly but I'm hoping, and therefore telling you, that it's worth it.]
[This is a long one.]

"Every night before bed, say for a week, / we recommend admitting a lie / or a deception, sotto voice, a rogue's prayer /
to the soul you know you have, / no matter how tattered or dormant.

Trust us, your secrets differentiate you

from no one, but the soul awakens
a little when it hears them."

---

10. Thunder Perfect Autowin/ Top 10 Paradoxes

"And if only you could raise / your hypocrisy to the level of art, / like forgery, there might be / real hope for you."

In December, Stef and A;ex did a vlog with us for Cait, who's shoulder wasn't feeling nice. After filming, sitting in the hallway, A;ex said to me, dead serious, re: the vlogging experience: "I thought I'd lost you there for a minute."

That night was the first time I'd declared I wanted to stop vlogging, but I was convinced by my comrades to soldier on. Last week sometime, A;ex and Cait were talking about how truly weird it is -- the way Hav & I change when the camera goes on. Hav's a professional, obvs, but for me I guess it's protection ... a "character," 'cause that open revelation of physicality felt too personal for me. I'd nixed footage from the car on the night Hav met Lozo 'cause it felt too "real," and did attempt to halt "Uh Huh ... Her?" production once too. Thank G-d I didn't, 'cause that prize pack probs has a genie in it, and I hope a few posters/real dolls.

Speaking of "real" dolls ... I'm not sure what the "real" me is ["real" is a problematic term ... "authentic"? "full"?] As my profile suggests, I do not know who I am. I don't know what that means -- it's not that I'm just growing up, it's that I change my mind a lot. It's that until the age of 14, I wanted to be an actress. 'Til 18: filmmaker. Now: marine biologist. JK, I just liked Sea World a lot once.

So now that Haviland's in L.A., why am I still vlogging? Clearly being on camera is more her thing. Well ... follow-through. Is an interest. And it's fun! It's fun now, w/various guest vloggers. But mostly: I la-la-love editing, it's like my number one favorite activity. I like the feedback, it's another way to be "known" in this performance art liveblog known as um, whatever this is. I find it interesting. I love that it's brought new readers/audience, which I didn't expect (for people to watch the vlogs independently from reading this, like that they'd be entertaining enough on their own?). Different circumstances, different formats or media, calls for different attitudes.

And y'know, there's that "lonely little lez in Iowa" ... 'cause I wonder, always, if I'd seen Shane as an adolescent and believed that there were lesbians out there who weren't just like my Mom or her friends, if maybe that would've changed everything.

But also, clearly that is also me, even if it's not all of me. What is the "real me" anyhow? Can it be a lot of things, or is that a lie? I often gravitate towards very specific & self-assured people, maybe 'cause I want clues of how to be so sure of myself, because I'm a Sancho at heart, never a real knight. Childhood and adolescence demands a choice, adulthood I hope offers more freedom.

'Cause paradox, contradiction, inner conflict ... is my bag. Because I am also opposites. Because that's why I feel like I'm always lying, which is consequently why I feel the need. To talk so much. "This is what I just said, but [this] is what I meant." [pause] "No. [this] is what I meant."

To start with, "pop" culture vs. "high" culture. Bisexuality. Like You vs. Like Everyone. Insecure vs. Sure. Smart vs. Vapid. Ambitious vs. Depressive. And so on. I feel howevs that I've possibly discussed this so much that I must've done a Top Ten about it at some point?

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9. Top Ten Things I Don't Say, Haven't Said

"Some people of course expect / to be rewarded for stumbling / and rising from the floor / and stumbling again, but we give / no credit for living."

Our culture, now, is very "Behind the Music." This "what can I avoid saying? what do people know anyway?" complex has clear origins: meeting people in 3-D via blog who say "I thought ____ was happening, but I would never have said so, or asked" (and it was) (or wasn't), the occasional succession of questions via comment or email, some interesting reader survey responses, the fact that I feel -- because I read too much into everything myself -- that some things are obvious, that I don't need to say them, but also realize, no-one's paying nearly as much attention as I am (to myself). I've lately started to assume that no-one assumes anything really. Do you?

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8. There Are Beautiful Things I Want to Dispose Of [reader suggested topic]

"We favor vitality / over goodness, even over effort;"

Sometimes I obtain books I've already read just to have my own copy. For example, I borrowed "The Year of Magical Thinking" (Joan Didion) from Krista, "I Am Not Myself These Days" (Josh Kilmer-Purcell) from Lo, "Appetites" (Caroline Knapp) from the public library, "Girl" (Blake Nelson) from Kristyna in 10th grade. Then I'll see a copy at a used bookstore and think, well, I'd like to have my own copy. But it has no underlines. Now, I rarely borrow books I intend to return. I haven't forgotten ... I just cracked the spine, dog-eared the pages and possibly also underlined.

I gave up tight jeans about six months ago. I keep them, in case I give up baggy jeans again. History would suggest role reversal could occur at any moment, I'd like to be prepared/budget about it.

Once, my legendary (and presently radio silent) high school soulmate/BFF/everything sold all his clothing and possessions and moved to Africa. I'd like to do that, but maybe stay here. Just to prove that I can. But what if I can't?

I just found a Calvin Klien tag for a push-up bra. $36.00. Underneath the iconic font spelling out "Calvin Klien," handwriting reads: "Aspects of a Theory of Syntax (1957)."

Sometimes people would give me earrings as gifts, though I didn't have my ears pierced. Being female, I guess, was enough.

I have a file in my file folder called "The Way We Were." Some happy, some sad.

---

7. Top 10 Most Important Autowin Moments since April 8th, 2007
"'we love a great belly laugh / more than anything."

1 be my intern (may 07), 2 breakup (june 07), 3 living it out (july 07),
4 we're alright we're up all night, and y'all emerged from the vortex (august 07)
5 the big reveal (august 07), 6 first vlog (oct. 07)
7 getting fired (deleting my entire blog and then re-posting it) (oct 07),
8 renewal (nov 07)
9 visiting the actual carousel of progress, obvs (feb 08).
10 because i heard from a lot of you i hadn't heard from in a while (march 08).

The problem is, I don't think that's true, I think I'm picking the wrong things and missing things, and even thinking about this list makes my head hurt and then it makes me feel too self-centered anyhow, so I have to stop.

---

6. Top 10 Things That Have Changed Since April 8th, 2007

"In your case we do worry / there may not be enough / quarrel in you, or enough courage / to acknowledge your worst inclinations."

I live somewhere new now. I'm sick of hearing gunshots all the time. Sometimes I think it'd be easier if I just saw someone get shot, 'cause maybe it's not hearing shots but the sense of impending doom that one day I will see it happen, but then I remember when they shot her up at the hospital, and that it made me so sick/sad that I fell on the floor too, and sobbed, and then they made me leave, and then I realize I couldn't handle witnessing a bullet from a gun, could I. I don't wanna see people go down. What did the hands feel like? and about the hearts. could you feel their hearts beating beneath their chests?

I cut my hair so I'd stop being heckled, so I could pass for a boy in the dark & winter, or at least a lesbian in the light & spring. I no longer purchase unlimited metrocards. There is Tegan & Sara.

Oh ...

I might, in fact, argue: everything, absolutely everything.

---

5.

"Know that the soul converts them / into tenderness. Nothing pleases it more."

So, I was reading my friend's post about April's cruelty and thought I would like to somehow
write about the concentrated succession of tragedies upon single beings [not referring, here, to a specific being [unfortunately, I am referring to life generally as I know it but also to many specific beings], but I don't know enough grammar to tell you what I mean] without naming tragedies.

5a. And realize this:

That I grew up in a swamp of it (my mother: her parents divorced, her father disappeared, mother died at 14, raised by grandparents who died, her father reappeared, then died, she divorced, her ex-husband died, my father: nothing much, 'til his own. i don't know if that's fair or not, my suspicion is that life isn't). Therefore, wasn't expecting otherwise, necessarily, though I was hoping and still believed -- until about a year ago [a feeling that's grown stronger and stronger still] -- that there was a certain amount of order to be expected. I no longer believe in such things.

All you can do, as a woman once said in a suprisingly wise moment of a vlog, is "just wait for the next joke. So we should just try to laugh and make out as much as possible."

---

4. Top 10 Things I Talk About But Maybe Shouldn't, Due to Technical Problems, like Actual Lack of Authority

"So next week why not admit / that what Raskolnikov did / has always made you dream?"

Why not admit that I didn't know who Raskolnikov was, so I googled him, and found him on Wikipedia, and, in lieu of ever actually reading Crime & Punishment: yes, I find what he did [according to the good people at Wikipedia] dreamy. It's the dream of being right enough to take an axe to it, right? I often dream of losing my teeth or being inconveniently naked, I still dream in clichè.

This topic I thought of when Slicey (of The L Word Online) asked me how, if I claim to never watch teevee, I know so much about pop culture. I thought I could do a list of things I talk about unknowingly -- shows I've seen 0-6 times but still speak of with authority, like Tila Tequila, The Office, Heroes, Sugar Rush etc. The answer is: I read a lot about pop culture and therefore feel like I know more about it than I do, I watched A LOT of television in the mid-nineties, and the shows that I do know, I KNOW -- The L Word, West Wing, Six Feet Under, My So-Called Life, Queer as Folk, Sex and the City, Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson's Creek. Also I'm compulsive and generally watch entire seasons of one show in one weekend via DVD. Also, I watch TV at the gym, that's how I've seen America's Next Top Model and Tila Tequila.

Also: I don't know, really, actually. I just do? It's just that I rarely sit down and watch, though I guess maybe it's just on sometimes. I really don't know.

---

3. What Was Life Like Before _____?

"The more you explore yourself / the more you become unrecognizable."

Let me confess: Tinkerbell was an impulse buy. We debated returning Tinkerbell, due to concerns related to value vs. cost. I'm so glad we trusted the impulse. Cait asked a few days ago, "What was life like before Tinkerbell? I can't remember, what did we do?" I think I generally put words in my friends' mouths, instead of Tinkerbell's. If I wanted to hide something I swallowed a capsule like Maria Full of Grace. JK, there's never anything good in Tinkerbell's purse-pouch. Seriously, never.

*

Even though I was almost always living elsewhere, I still had a room at my Mom's 'til about '02, and the last time I stayed there for long was for about six weeks in the summer of 2000, between living in NYC and moving on to campus at U-Mich. An old friend came over w/a bottle of wine -- a jug, really, and we finished it, and then I hid the empty bottle in this storage bin/headboard which was filled with stuffed animals.

I couldn't put it w/the rest of the recycling. I don't know how I planned to hide it from my mother forever, or what consequences I expected if she'd found it. Sometimes it's hard to remember life pre-21. I guess that's for a lot of reasons. Anyhow, I still do that. I don't know why. Now that I've confessed this, I'll have to stop, 'cause my friends might look in my closet and wonder why there's an empty wine bottle next to the sheets. Then, before they can think about it too hard, they'll be on the ground wondering what large soft object just fell on their head. Srsly don't open the closet.

---

2. Top 10 Most Important Things to The Very Existence of Autowin

"Remember, we are here to help. / What you decide to keep / from the world, tell us."

Stephen Dunn, Tegan & Sara, my Friends, The L Word, Google Reader & Google Docs, the drink, fourfour, bartleby, commenters, Victor & Maureen.

---

1. Lucky Numbers: 3, 11, 21, 31, 41, 43

I've been saving this fortune cookie for the end of this blog. That's the kind of thing I'd make up. But I'm not making this up, actually. I've been tempted to crack it open and see right now for hours, in the same way I was always tempted to watch the next episode of TLW I had on disc but didn't, or -- in a former life, a life more reckless than the one I live now -- to be tempted to do the whole gram at once [but did]. [In the same way that writing that gave me a craving strong enough I'd've fulfilled it, if it was in front of me, with its twenty minutes of oblivion all lined up.]

*
"Some people never have anything except ideas. Go do it"
(Chinese word on the back: WAIT [deng])
*
"We understand everything / we pass it on."
-Stephen Dunn, "The Soul's Agents"
*

¹ This opening paragraph is from the intro paragraph to Don Quijote, but like if it was Mad Libs. I haven't read DQ [see "4"], but I did read the first 300 or so pages, including the introduction, which this is from, so it's not cheating. I don't, for the record, talk about books I haven't read.

Sunday Top Ten: Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Hello, welcome to Friday. How are you? Good, good. This is fo'reals the last post of Secrets Week. JK! I mean: it is. This is the last post of secrets week, but I've got a few left that I want to treat properly, so I'll use 'em next week some time, I'm gonna take a vaycay from talking about you and return to making fun of myself for a few days. If by 2008 you don't see yours in here, it's 'cause you're a complete fuck-up and I can't handle your issues, or because putting up all the Riese-Shrine photos I received would seem a little self-indulgent, and clearly I do not indulge the self. No, it's because it got lost in the shuffle probs, like my favorite green hat and my American Eagle hoodie, both MIA for a few weeks now. And Amber, where's Amber? I don't know. You can email me with YOU ARE RETARDED in the subject line or something, and then re-paste your secret, if you don't see it here by 2008.

**

**

So many of my personal friends responded with "You know all my secrets, right? Use whatevs." Really though? I don't know if any of my friends know all my secrets. My journal -- you know, the old fashioned pen-and-ink kind, is The Real Secret vault. There's still so much I'll never tell, never, and I hate that, and that maybe this blog is often a massive overcompensation for the guilt associated with these compromises. Maybe that's why I'm so non-judgmental of others, because I feel I've got the same ugly secrets, I'm just hiding mine better.

Thus, I'm obsessed with various permutations of "truth" [Thus, I la-la-la-loved Closer]... I believe that often ignorance is bliss, but sometimes lying is a cop-out too. I had a friend who checked her boyfriend's email as regularly as she checked her own, and the thing is that chances are you've got a lot of evil thoughts about people you love but you can't tell them everything, I mean, it's not relevant, you gotta filter. If he was cheating on her, there'd be more evidence than one flirtatious email to an old girlfriend she uncovered deviously. That's why I don't read other people's journals or hack into their email (unless they are having affairs with 16-year-old synchronized swimmers using the laptop I gave them) because I've realised that what we choose to communicate with each other often holds an intent even purer than truth.

We do what we do to each other and reveal what we do for a reason, to meet a certain end/intent, and the reason often matters more than our darkest paranoias or theories about it, 'cause that's the truth of what we want even if it's not the truth of how we feel, so it's the only practical thing to say. Does that make sense? Probably not. I'm not sure if I even know what I'm talking about. This is, as you may notice, a pattern with me. What's my secret? I've got that song from Beauty and the Beast stuck in my head, it's making me crazy. Bonjour! Good-day! How is your family? Bonjour! Good-day! How is your wife? But she won't find out it's him 'til Chapter THREEEEEEEE.

*
"You knew me pretty well but I never let you see my dark side." (Chris Pureka)
*

What's my Secret? That's sort of a lie up there because I used to read other people's journals almost compulsively. So gross. This was years ago -- high school, I guess ... the last time I read someone else's journal was -- I'll call him "Rick." It was March 2000, he was in the shower, it was right there, right next to the bed, I just had to look. He'd written "I'm "dating" Marie now, she's sooo cute, hot body ... but she's 18, and it shows, she's soooo 18 ..." and I thought, "Wow, I gotta start acting more mature." He was 27. Sidenote, I'm almost 27, and still not mature, so I don't think it was an age thing. I also thought of that line from Sex and the City that Miranda says when a guy calls her sexy: "Smart, yes, sometimes cute, but never sexy. Sexy is the thing I try to get them to see me as after I win them over with my personality," to which Carrie responds: "You win men over with your personality?"

I got addicted to his journal. I needed it to tell me what to do next, until it started telling me about the other women, the ones who were his age and mature, soooooo mature, "real women" who had multiple orgasms like easy and apparently didn't think it was cool to race him to the subway stop or dance on the bar or run drunk through Times Square doing heel-clicks like in Newsies or dress in costume just for fun.

Then he read mine. We shared a locker at work, I trusted him [I don't know why I trusted him, but I did], I kept my journal in the locker.

I didn't know this of course; he just ignored me for about two weeks and then when I asked him why he was being such a consistent douchetard he finally came out with it: "Why do you care how I act to you? Aren't I BORING, anyhow?"

Omg, omg, like, if I'd had ten cheerleaders behind me going "O! M! G!" that wouldn't've been enough. Didn't he know I'm made the Top Ten Reasons I Can't Date Rick because I didn't think I had a choice, and I needed to feel better about my only option?

And also, sidenote, he was kinda boring, as a person, but I was never bored with him. We had fun together, we made each other laugh a lot and he made me feel pretty.

How unfair, I thought, and how unshakeable. I also wondered why he hadn't noted, on that same list, that I didn't like this one navy blue turtleneck t-shirt sweater, because he totally kept wearing it. This is that list, from my journal, May 2000:

Why He's Wrong For Me:
1. Likes Armageddon and other bad movies.
2. Fat-ish.
3. Doesn't like my writing
4. Too old
5. Becoming weird about going out.
6. Doesn't read poetry.
7. Weird attitude about women.
8. Those light jeans and that one blue turtleneck -- HATE IT.
9. Sometimes, he bores me.
10. He only cares about money -- has no true passion in life.

He still made me see Mission to Mars with him, so obviously he saw what he wanted to see anyhow. There's only so much space for the reality we've decided is our own, and sometimes that reality involves Ben Affleck like it or not. Also, hello, Sunday Top Ten, birthing itself right there.

**

The point is that I learned my lesson. You don't really wanna know what people say about you in their journal, but I'm glad that he had one, for his sake. Ignorance is totes bliss, sometimes ... but lately, I've been thinking maybe it's not. Maybe we'd all be better off if we figured out a way to keep something inside but also to be way more honest than we are. Emotional truths: important. We shouldn't read each other's journals, but maybe there wouldn't be so much to hide if we stopped hiding, like from ourselves. Yeah, I'm totally Angela Chase today.

So .... yeah. Thanks, dudes. For like, sharing your secrets with me. It's awesome to hear that seeing them has helped you in some way, that's the best thing I could ever hope for, seriously.

And thus, here we go, Bonjour! Good day! wWAAAAA.
**

SUNDAY TOP TEN: PART FOUR OF FIVE:
SECRETS SECRETS STILL ARE FUN
AND IT SEEMS AS THOUGH I'LL NEVER BE DONE
DOES ANYONE WANT SOME RUM?
NOT ME, I LIKE VODKA, BUT THANKS.
DUM-DUM-DUM.
*

*
16. Like O, Like H

Rayanne's home from college for the summer and so she gets a job at Circuit City, where she sells major appliances like overpriced refrigerators, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners. Her coworkers, slightly more dedicated to the fine art of keeping things Cold and Clean, are all older men and she's the only young firm object/body with tits. In fact, she believes her hiring is owed equally to the following three things: good grades, rudimentary understanding of refrigeration technology, C-cups.

Steve works in Car Stereo Install, which's the big-box store equivalent of blue collar. He's tall and good looking, barrel-chested and of black Irish descent, and he ignores Rayanne which naturally intrigues her. He disappears for two weeks and returns with stories of visiting distant relatives in Dublin, and it all sounds so romantic -- Irish cousins he barely knew, taking him in and feeding him, keeping him swimming in whiskey and ale. He returns with gifts for his mother.

He strolls into the aisle between the washers and the dryers and Rayanne nearly forgets everything she knows about defrosters when he approaches her, smiling all dimpled, all white teeth and lips and a strong chin with its rough, black stubble. She wonders what that might feel like on her neck and that wonder flushes her face and skin and her breath is intentional: "Hello there," she says, like a movie star.

"I took a trip to Ireland. I brought this back for you".

English Lavender. She's confused and flattered. They make plans for Friday night. She laughs nervously, her curiosity burns, and doesn't die down when she learns he's a Jesus freak. Really? Not one of THOSE Jesus freaks, okay then, she wants to know how that stubble feels. His hair looks soft.

Yes, she says, let's go for a drive in your car. The stubble is sandpaper, but he's gentle, he can kiss.

The summer hums on. She sells crappy microwaves to single men and giant refrigerators to obese women. She thinks: maybe I won't go back to college. I could just keep working, right? The money's pretty good.

More Friday nights are spent making out in the car: she's virginal and unsure but his hands know things about how to hold hips and her legs know something about how to straddle and respond to the indecent suggestions of his lips.

Stop, he says.

Stop? She says.

We know where this is going, he says.

We do? She says.

Yes, he says. I'm a Christian, Ray.

Right, she thinks. He mustn't be seduced by virginal flesh.

You should be ashamed, he says, almost removing her body from his body like it's a blanket the world just got too warm for.

What the fuck did you just say? She asks. She feels sick. Will he see her again? Can they just slow things down?

His stubble is rough, she wants to claw the flesh from her cheek. Also she's got no plans to accept Jesus as her personal savior. In fact, she's already eyeing the door as she so often does, the door she believes in far stronger than he claims to believe in something holy and designated as such. She doesn't want to meet his mothers. She will build temples to honor her escape. He doesn't seem to understand. Don't call me, she tells him. She's going back to college.

Oh -- and? All her doors swing open, slam shut. I fucking hate English Lavender.

*
17. I Hear Noises

Kim likes to performance dance to Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" for an audience. She's pretty sure it makes everyone else uncomfortable and embarrassed for her, but she refuses to give it up up until she wins some kind of gold medal, perhaps earns one million you tube clicks. "Something in this league."
**

Lisa says she's bisexual and is active in the bisexual-activist community, but the truth is she's really only interested in girls if she's watching her boyfriend fuck them.

**

Nicole has regular sexual dreams about her brother and has for about a decade. She blames V.C. Andrews.

**
18. So Jealous

When Elyse and Jordan broke up, she first got depressed and then depressed/completely fucked up and then so jealous when she saw him with another girl that she could barely do anything besides prove as often as possible that she was desired, desirous, desirable.

So she decided to seduce the French exchange teacher. One loaded moment of eye contact can make something into something, just like that. He was maybe 24 and she was 17 so it wasn't too creepy, just totally illegal and weird and "not hot at all."

After it happened, she was over it immediately. Mission accomplished. She went back to being an obsessive tater-tot-eating jealous high school girl but she knew that he was probably racked with guilt and petrified that she'd tell on him.

The next day, he sent her an email that said "Pas de regrets, et toi?" As in: "If I say I don't regret this huge mistake maybe she won't tell on me."

She didn't. She only told one person; me. What's my secret? I actually kept it, among others.

I've been historically bad at this; not at blurting others' secrets to the world, but at establishing secret clauses to secret-keeping. Like; "Well, I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but OBVS I have to tell you, as you're my boyfriend/girlfriend/BFF" or whatever. I got better at not doing this as I got older, but now it's easier to navigate since my friends are all over the place and might not even meet each other [until someone decides for some insane reason to marry me and then obvs all my friends will meet each other because there'll probs be a large party involving copious amounts of drink, and Diet Doctor Pepper for Haviland. Did I mention that I proposed to Haviland at the Time Warner Center? I think I did. However I didn't have a ring, because I'm not a money tree, so, you know, so don't think that if she's not wearing one it means she didn't say "Yes."].

But every now and then you have someone who's secrets you keep like second nature, you just do it, you just can't betray them, and won't, and not because of fear but because it feels just totally wrong to do so, you're not tempted, you're just silent.

*
19. Time Running

This happened to Sharon when she was 12 and it changed everything more than she's cared to admit. More than she's admitted. She was twelve. She had to stay late at school and therefore walked home alone.

At the top of her road she saw a guy standing near her house. Chances are she would've quickly forgotten this if what followed hadn't happened (He isn't going to rape her, I'm telling you this now because if that's what you're expecting, as I was, then your primary reaction to what follows will be relief that she doesn't get raped, and I don't want relief to be a part of what you feel about it, so I'm saying this now.)

He sees her, he turns, he walks away, and she thinks nothing of it 'til she reaches her back gate and sees him still standing there, smoking. He buts out his cigarette. He pulls down his pants.

She didn't know what to do: he was right in front of her gate. She keeps walking, she puts her head down and walks by in front of him.

This she remembers: in one swift moment, when she's passing and he's got his pants down, poised for something she knows can't possibly be good -- he takes that moment to put his hand on her ass, lean into her ear and say, hot and heavy breathing, "Alright, darling."

Sharon has something in her hand, she swings it, she doesn't know if she hits him or not but the next thing she remembers is turning around and seeing him running up the road. She stands there for a few seconds, takes some deep breaths, and goes inside. She walks right into the living room, looks at her Mom and her Mom asks: 'Are you alright?"

She has a million thoughts but she doesn't know the words for them, doesn't know yet how it feels to be touched when it's not a violation, doesn't know anything, she's twelve, experience, after all, is relative to only one thing which is all other experience, so she says: "Yeah, I'm fine. Work okay?"

Sharon isn't sure why she still hasn't told anyone, and sometimes she wonders if keeping it inside has enabled her to almost forget, like how sometimes she looks back and thinks it may've just been a dream.

She's gotten to the stage where she thinks that people would just think she was being silly if she told them, because "nothing" happened, things could've been so much worse: she was lucky that she was at her back gate and lucky that she had something to swing and lucky that nothing happened. But the thought of what could've happened--what was about to happen--scared her then, and continues to.

Maybe it's not that big of a thing, she reasons, but she was twelve. She thought life was safe. It was the first legitimately frightening thing to ever put it's breath or hands someplace unexpected and also the first frightening thing she's dealt with alone.

*
20. Clever Meals

Megan: "There's another kind of secret that transcends these innocent, everyday dishonesties. A sort of deception that, if revealed, would change what even your closest friends think of you. It'd change what they'd say when they talked about you, and it wouldn't be something you could apologize for or change. You just have to live with it buried in the coldest recesses of your conscience or risk forever exposing yourself for what you truly are. Most people are lucky enough not to bear this sort of secret. I am not so lucky. You might think this selfish, but that's only because you've ever experienced the darkness i've known for thirteen years. It's with this meager apology that I must let it be known ..."

Megan doesn't like Wes Anderson films. It felt good for her to say it out loud, after she recovered from the shock. It's just not fait. She's exactly the kind of person who oughta unabashedly adore Wes Anderson. She owns a white belt like the other shiny, happy hipsters. ("I'm not wearing it right now, obviously, but I own it.") Why can't she see the brilliance in these movies? All she sees is a science fiction film that's set in reality, "which is retarded."

Yes, she's seen them all: Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic. She's done what she could to fill this gaping hole in her hipster delusion -- but she'd like to add, having seen them all, that they're really not any different from one another.

She knows that were her friends to discover her true feelings, she'd be permanently branded as hands down totes uncool, more of a J-Crew chino totesbag toter who puts summer blockbusters on reserve at her local store, she probs couldn't even use Netflix to obtain her uncool movies. She'll just continue to laugh along as grown men run around onscreen in yellow jumpsuits, shooting precious statements of overgrown boyhood into inappropriate situations while a stone-faced Bill Murray extols self-consciously fetishized snibbets of wisdom onto the young scholars in his accidental care.

Unlike Coldplay, Life of Pi, and Grey's Anatomy, the evidence is stacked against her and she's certain the problem "lies unquestionably with me, not West Anderson. Acceptance is the first step. All I can do now is simply pray that my sordid abnormality is never discovered by my friends, relatives," or anyone else she could ever see ever.

[What's my secret? I couldn't even get through Life Aquatic or Bottle Rocket actually, though I loved Royal Tenenabums because Margot Tennenbaum is my hero both for her supreme sense of style (the eyeliner and the blonde hair, the polo shirts) and her deadpan delivery of life's must brutal truths. I'm likely to quote her and you might not even know it if you aren't as dedicated as me. She is everything I ever want to be in life and more and I dedicated the entire winter of 2004 to becoming Margot, even announcing this intention to the entire dinner table when Natalie's parents took us out for her birthday, which didn't go over as well as the other diners plans to get internships and such. Howevs, all his movies are slightly irritating though, just 'cause they're so super precious and like "oh, look at these boys who can't grow up, they are so adorable awww." I liked Rushmore.]

Sunday Top Ten: Promise I'll be Perfect From Now On

This week's Sunday Top Ten is Crystal's fault, kinda -- I like to absolve myself of blame straight away. I'd told her a hands-down totes fantastic story about listening to The Bible Experience on audiobook, which I later related here, and she suggested: "That would be an interesting/hilarious blog, you could call it 'Sunday Top Ten: Times I've Cheated to Win the Hearts of Others.' Actually that's a really crap title. This is why I don't have a blog audience." She's just being self-deprecating, obvs, she's got quite an audience considering she deletes her blog every two days, an action I've only had the courage to do once, and I didn't delete it, I just made the whole thing private for about ten hours. Everyone freaked out and thought I'd died. Seriously, if I'd died, I wouldn't've deleted my myspace profile first, which I did that same night. Rough night.

Anyhow, I tried but honestly couldn't think of ten times I've cheated to win the hearts of others ... then I considered "Things I've Done to Win the Hearts of Others" ... salivated over the idea of publicly stating my heaps of selfless grand gestures, supreme gifts and extraordinary efforts of relationships past, then realised that'd mostly be an exercise in self-congratulatory pride, fun for me, less fun for you ...

... then several un-interesting topic-morphs later, this became what it is, "Things I've Picked Up from the Fire" .... or "You Might Wanna Change Me, If You Met Me," which's funny because halfway into this thing I saw Crystal'd updated her blog [she's likely to delete it before I finish this paragraph so that may be a dead link] and she'd touched on this topic -- you know, but maybe not funny, coincidence = "clear signs of divine oversight" ... Anyhow, on seeing her ex next year: "I'd like to make some changes before then ... not because she didn't like me, she really did, that's the problem. She likes retards, so next time I see her I'd like to not be retarded. The need for change is not only about her though, she may be the least of it. It's also because if I keep going to the way I am ..."

Sooo .... relationships are not easy. I'm not in one or anything, but I've been, and I've got friends that are/were and it seems the topic of "how much can you change for someone" has been consistent issue and conversation topics w/my friends over the past several months -- how do you draw the line between what you're doing in light of them and what's too much? -- as Carrie Bradshaw said: "When does compromise become compromising?" For example in my last relationship I was unwilling to give up Satan-Worship, gluttony and my relationship with Lozo, I felt that would've been compromising. JK. Long story. [Good story.]

Sometimes, people want other people to change. Change is also not easy. Howevs, sometimes you're like: you know what, good point. This is something about myself I'd like to work on, and this is something that would benefit both of us and me especially in the long run, or like I wanted to read that book anyhow.

Angela : So, you and Kyle broke up? I mean, was there like, a reason?
Sharon : I guess -- I'd have to say -- it was my beliefs. I didn't feel -- like I should -- give up my beliefs. Even, even for Kyle.
Angela : So how do you, like -- I mean, you just -- *told* him that you didn't wanna have sex with him, no matter how much he was like expecting it?
Sharon : Oh, no. Oh, no, no. We had sex. I'm saying I had a belief that he was being a butthead, which was true.
-My So Called Life, Episode #13, "Pressure"

So anyhow, sometimes, you fight about behavior for eons, try to change for each other, flip fault like your brain's alternately treading water and breath-holding diving ... only to discover underneath all of that effort: you've just got different personalities. No one's wrong or right, no one's got big problems needing immediate fixing ... you're just not right together right now or possibly ever.

Sometimes, I feel like it's almost easier to be with someone who's nothing like you on the surface 'cause then you're forced to look for more essential similarities right away, rather than proceeding on a base level assumption that you're on the same page when in fact, you just like the same movies and have similar friends. You know?

When do you stop trying to make it work? When does it stop being good enough to be worth the actual time -- the actual minutes of life you're willing to devote to something ultimately temporary, preventing the entrance of other possibilities -- it's often argued that people don't ever really change, or that you can't change who you are, you can only change how you act or react. I think people can change, but finding a person at a point when the change you require is the change they can provide--that's tough. So often we're propelled into things when a piece of our soul recognises something beautiful and similar in the other but so often, timing is everything. So often, timing is tragedy. So often, timing is nothing, people are tragedy, so often, who the fuck knows.

Larry: Everyone learns, nobody changes.
Anna: You don't change.

-Patrick Marber, Closer
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"People don't change, Wolverine. You were an animal then, and you're an animal now."
-X-Men 2
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"There are the people who you've known forever who know you in this way that other people can't because they've seen you change. They've let you change."
-"Angela," My So-Called Life
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"I won't mistake you for problems with me."
-Tegan & Sara, "I Won't Be Left."
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Sunday Top Ten: They Made Me Do It
OR Things We Picked Up in the Fire,
and Either Kept or Discarded
in which I refer to many different people as "X,"
don't get confused. Not all the same person. That'd be a very schizo person. Haha! HA!!!
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10. Smoking (Doesn't Stick)

I'm the most impressionable cigarette smoker ever. I've previously met non-smokers whom I've told "Oh yeah, smoking, gross, would never do that," revealing nothing of my past affections. Meanwhile, I'll date a smoker, and then start smoking. I never get addicted [Seriously; no denial here, I'm pretty open about my vices], it's just like "Oh, you're having one? I'll have one." Things'll end because things often do: and always, always, a partial pack remains. Theirs or mine --so I open the partial pack, I finish it. Ash builds at the base of a glass jar that once held a cheap candle. And then I toss it.

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9. Lifting (Didn't Stick)
X asked me to meet him at the gym. I didn't know, I was 18, was it a date? In public high school, it seemed date #1 --for my friends obvs as I got no play in public high school -- was "making out while drunk in your friend's basement," and in boarding school, I dunno, the same thing but in the woods? No, JK. The Mel-Caf obvs. X told me it was a date, later, after, when we were at dinner.

X was 27, I felt grown-up like a girl in a magazine. X made me do stuff with free weights. "I just do the lat pulldown and cardio," I'd confessed though really I knew better. But X made me lift with him, said I needed to get strong, and then I got comfortable enough to do it on my own. Then I left New York, and him, and muscles eventually too. I prefer to be dainty, like a willow in the breeze.
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8. Watching Movies Again (Stuck)

Me: "Whatcha doin'?"
X: "Lebowski."
Me: "Again?"
X: "I love Lebowski."
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Me: "Whatcha doin'?"
X: "Watching Super Troopers."
Me: "Again?"
X: "It's so funny. Wanna come over?"
Me: "And watch Super Troopers?"
X: "It's so funny."

I'd never really understood why people re-watch movies, I'd get so restless. It was hard enough for me to pay attention the first time around, let alone the second time -- I get it now, all the things you miss the first time around sometimes, and it's satisfying in that way as life itself rarely is -- do-overs, you get it, really get it this time. Or something like Reality Bites that seemed boring and retarded the first time (1994) and like it'd been coiled straight outta my soul the second time (2005). But then I started to understand the entirely separate but totes valuable aspect of re-watching films, one of these being that if you wanted to make out instead you could I guess -- anyhow it provides something else entirely the 10th or 11th time, it's like soup or a blanket or something. I own DVDs now. I like them in the background sometimes; Gia, Almost Famous, St. Elmo's Fire, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

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7. December is Darkest, in June There's The Light, But This Empty Bedroom Won't Make Anything Right, June July August September October I'm Alive November December Yeah All Through The Winter I'm Alive (Didn't Stick)
It seemed like X and I had tickets upon tickets to things; like every time we considered breaking up, in the back of my mind I'd be like "Fuck, what about the Pistons tickets? What about the Unwritten Law tickets?" or whathaveyou. Life became concert-and-sporting-event-centric, which felt-grown up to me, like these suburban pleasures based on national tours 'cause nothing exciting happened organically out there, but really, that was just the beginning of what X was willing to line up overnight for, I felt like X was on a calender that was light years more organised and boring than mine, that X knew where he wanted to be next year and what row and aisle number, I didn't even know what music I'd like then. Or maybe my favorite player was about to get traded, or maybe I'd have finally run away.

I want to be able to plan that far in advance. I want that really bad, sometimes.

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6. Embracing Debt (Durrrr)

Before I met X, who was in Law School, I was unaware that one had the option to NOT pay off one's credit card at the end of the month. X was a Master of Debt. We'd get back to X's Brooklyn Heights apartment and X'd beeline for his computer to log that day's receipts on Quicken. One summer in L.A., X lived off of credit cards -- making cash withdrawals to enable minimum payments. X often said: "I'm the master of my debt" and "I have perfect credit." Amazed by the unused line of personal credit I had available, X encouraged me to take advantage of it, not be so uptight. And so: here we are, kids.

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Maybe I would have been
Something you'd be good at
Maybe you would have been
Something I'd be good at.
-Tegan & Sara, "Call it Off"

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5. I Bet it Stung, Don't Get so Uptight, Don't Get So Uptight ... (Didn't Stick)

X didn't like it when I made fun of him. Something about our sense of humors didn't exactly work together, which was odd, as we were described as "the funniest guy in school and the funniest girl in school," as if our relationship was instant comedy gold. Sometimes it was, but sometimes it really wasn't. I'm aware that making-fun-of-someone often veers into cruel and low-blow territory, with humor used to mask deep-rooted and vicious truths, but I don't do that, I'm just mean when I wanna be mean, not funny, anyhow I tried to be nicer. Now I just know I can't deal with sensitive people, or people who are sensitive to me specifically for whatever reason, like past insecurities/problems whatevs whatevs. You've gotta be able to take it -- and dish it out -- or it just won't work.
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4. Blogging my Life Away (Stuck, Obvs)
I don't think I ever woulda started a blog if X didn't have one. I was like "what is this blog thing? And how is it different than livejournal?" She showed me the light.

Also, I've literally had three requests for additional photographs of X's ass, previously the center of attention when I used these old photos of us in my Dream Jobs Sunday Top Ten and It's Not What You're Like, It's What You Like Sunday Top Ten. I'd ask her if it's okay to post additional photos, but that'd be a little awkward, so I'll just do it. If I had that ass, I'd want it photographed and displayed as often as possible.

Also, FYI, this was X's comment-response to the multitude of ass-compliments received following the March post, which's brill: "Oh my ass is FAMOUS! There are so many people that I would like to thank ... Riese for making this public announcement on my "somewhat perfect' feature (and for buying us those amazing matching boy shorts which read "Hands where I can see 'em" and which perfectly hug my curves), Blox-tox for saying 'Carmen Morales perfect' which made my day, my Mom b/c I believe I inherited this ass, and by gym Maxim where cardio machines make it all that it can be!"

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3. Being Blonde (Stuck)

My hair stopped being naturally blonde in the early 90's, but I've been dying my hair for so long that I forgot what my natural hair color was 'til I let it all grow out about two years ago as part of my Low-Maintenance Movement. Haviland [no point in X'ng dear Hav] saw my old photos and immediately launched a personal campaign to convince me that I had to go back to blonde, get highlights, etc. I'm not opposed to these campaigns--I wouldn't kiss my high school boyfriend unless he'd done his hair the way I liked it. When I showed up at her apartment re-blonded, the second line out of her mouth was "Omigod, we're going to look SOOOOO hot on the cruise!" Agreed. See, here's a "before" and "after":

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"You're happy if the thing you naturally want makes the other person happy.
If it's not that way, then I don't know. I guess you're in limbo."
-Richard Ford, Wildfire

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2. Ending Teeny-BopHood (Stuck Obvs)

Email, 1998:
This following excerpt is from an email I sent Jake on May 13, 1998. It's brill in how it addresses how Ryan changed me and also how little I've changed since then. Also, "phat as hell" should probs like, come back. That's ace.

"This summer, I'm gonna tear down all those fucking pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes and Jared Leto from my wall. And take down that stupid bulletin board. If Ryan's taught me anything, it's that the whole Leonardo DiCaprio thing is totally fucking crazy ... I mean, what is that? He's not even fucking real! I need to get that shit off my walls, or get over that phase, as Ryan calls it, my 'teen bop' thing, but I can still have my guilty pleasures, e.g., 90210. I saw Dawson's Creek today! It was fucking awesome, just because it sucks that much. i think it's hilarious how stuff like that can almost make me cry. But I'm going to tear down all those pictures, throw them away, and turn half of my room into an office, like where I can write, and its' gonna be my computer, like maybe some pictures, like those postcards, and I can sit there and work on my novel, write letters, listen to music. It'll be phat as hell."

1. Attempting to Understand Republicans (Ugh.)

Sometimes I joke that if Kerry'd won in '04, it's possible my relationship with X coulda lasted a little longer, though ultimately we just weren't right together and X was ready to be a grownup and I was ready to make out with as many girls as possible. I had a lot of anger towards the Republicans and the Country and 'cause X was really the only Republican I knew, I took a lot of it out on him. X wasn't a fan of Bush, but X said "I'm not gonna vote for fucking KERRY," and then I stabbed his eyes out with the overgrown fingernails of unaborted babies and fire-bombed his room, killing all the women and children. And (and!!) the rest of X's family was totes liberal. Last time I saw X, he said he's a registered Democrat now, "cause of Bloomberg." Amazing.

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"I'm not unfaithful,
but I'll stray."
-Tegan & Sara
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We're left with style,
a particular way of standing and saying,
the idiosyncratic look
at the frown which meas nothing
until we say it does. Years later,
long after we believed it peculiar
to ourselves, we return to love.
We return to everything,
strange, inchoate. Like living
with someone, like living alone,
settling for the partial, the almost
satisfactory sense of it.
-Stephen Dunn, "Essay on the Personal"
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