June 10, 2008
Advert Mad Libs
I try to reinvent what’s broken.
When the Sports Chalet ad comes in the mail, rather than lump it into the recycle bin (a used Trader Joe’s bag), sometimes Sean and I play visual mad libs. (Is that a good description?) We take our sharpies and “photo pens” and write and draw on/about the models. Even this simple task becomes a lesson. Sean sighs, lays his pen down, and looks at me with a wry smile. “I keep thinking of nasty man stuff”. We giggle and I confess mine with the same sad smile: “I tend to think catty…” We are our genders, still.
Even short tasks become lengthy for us because we want to make it count. Rather than lay on the sex and jealousy jokes, we think harder. I draw curly hairs protruding from the appalling low-cut bikinis and give the young women tattoos on their stomachs that say “keepin’ it real”. But then I make the girl next to her a plastic-lady who thinks “stoopid hippie” and has a few exaggeratedly large body parts. Sean makes one of the bikini girls hold a huge blade in her awkward hand, then makes a surfer guy hold his huge illustrated wiener. OK so swirly fart doodles and jokes about fucking always make it into our Sports Chalet desecrations. It feels appropriate as long as it’s not the only thing that comes to mind.
I have memories of doing this with my sister when we were maybe 10-12. This short-lived discount store called Treasure Hunt had the best/most jacked up ads. Everything about them was hilarious; models, poses, outfits. It was a joke sundae sprinkled with snickers. One time I even initiated writing a letter to Treasure Hunt, I think with the intent of just mocking them. Yah, I was a pretty cool kid. We cut out pictures and wrote what I thought to be scathing commentaries next to them. Something along the lines of “Oh my God, NICE OUTFIT loser! Did you find that in the dumpster behind an old folks home? LOLOLOL!” (Except minus the LOLs because LOLing hadn’t been discovered in the early 90’s. All we had was “ahahahah”.) And I don’t recall actually sending the letter, just writing it. But damn did I have a great time. I still love putting words into the mouths of photos, imagining what’s going on just out of the shot, and guessing at the goals of stylists and photographers everywhere.
With Sports Chalet though, and with ads in general now, it’s more like a gender commentary. The men are decidedly “unattractive” and considerably older while the girls are barely legal stick figures. The boys surf, the girls hold surfboards. The boys can lean and look casual with their “friends” while the girls can only pose next to one another, oblivious of their surroundings and frozen in time while we soak up them young bods.
Oh ladies, I want to huge each of you and remind you that you’re so much more. (We all are.) That your looks and your ability to sexually arouse males and make other women feel inferior are a tiny fraction of who you actually are. The simile jumped out at me today: making sexuality your focus it like being a disembodied appendage. A floating hand where a whole body is needed to mean anything or be useful or fulfilling in anyway. I mean the hand is needed yah, but without being connected to the rest of the body, what good is it? Sexuality without personality or intimacy or intellect or soul… Again with the similes… It’s like the cloying sugar syrup that goes into a slushie. It’s only yummy with all that other stuff included in the package.
This journal is a constant source of amazement and learning for me. I could not be happier.
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May 27, 2008
Web Developers are Uppity
You know, I’m deleting all this soon so it’s sort of becoming funner to think about writing here. It’s like a Buddha Board: as the ink dries, it will disappear.
But really. It’s time to b-i-t-c-h!
I’ve been doing web development (no capitals on that right now, no clients to impress) for neigh upon 8 years now. My first commercial online venture - a retail e-commerce novelty shop - launched in May 2000. Daaang. Forever ago. Straight up tables. No includes, each page needing to be updated if navigation changed. And it did many times over the 4 years of it’s existence. Before that I played around with personal pages in 1999. Been doing it ever since with this domain. Thank goodness I got tired of code errors and not understanding the complexities of FULL service web development. Cuz now I OWN. Outside of the technologies that I have chosen not to work with - Flash and proprietary coding languages - I can achieve anything that I can imagine online. Anything. It’s a delicious fact. (Although for full disclosure, I do defer to Sean for PHP.)
Throughout those 8 years I’ve been a full-time and then just part-time wage slave, and mostly a full-time independent developer. Being somebody else’s employee always made me a little nuts. When I “retired” from being The Man’s lackey at the ripe old age of 24, I thought I’d be freeeeee!
Turns out though, a lot of other people had that same idea. We techs and designers can be awfully touchy. I’m not an employee, I’m an independent contractor. I’m not a computer nerd, I’m highly skilled in technical shiz that would make most people’s brain’s explode. I’m not suggesting this option to you dear client, I’m insisting that you defer to me without question.
Working totally solo can be pretty sweet as long as the client isn’t a damn know-it-all. (That’s my job.) But that’s rarely the case. The vast majority of my clients have bullshit websites that they got tricked into letting exist. Relatives, friends, and filibustering folk with a fresh certificate from Brainbench have created these monstrosities. They don’t attract or keep visitors, sell products, clearly convey information, or generally make much sense. The clients get tired of seeing no results and hire me (or me and Sean). I inevitably need files from the original “developer” and they do their best to make things difficult for everyone. It boggles my mind. I ask for a source file, I get a timid reply from the client saying “my original designer says you don’t know what you’re doing and/or they refuse to give you files”. WHAT THE EFF, DUDES? Are we not in this together? Did the client not PAY us to IMPROVE the website? So why are we arguing over who can do the job better when your work produced zero results? STEP OFF PLZ.
I have my issues. Having my beautiful workflow interrupted by someone’s ego issues… well it prevents me from doing my job AND it pushes my own ego’s buttons. And it happens almost every time. I’m really super tired of it. I like to wrassle complex Photoshop comps into valid CSS-driven sites. Not get into a pissing match with folks who let their mouths run without the inclusion of their brains.
I’ve been saying it for months now, that I was giving up web dev. One gets to a spot where she can’t make excuses anymore, and I find myself there. This work is satisfying in some regards, but certainly not fulfilling. And dealing with people as anal as me is too frustrating. We particularly particular individuals should probably be scattered across the corners of the earth. When we encounter one another, it’s like when time travel goes screwy and future you meets past you and tears in the time-space continuum occur. Yes, it’s exactly like that.
After this site I have 2 more lined up - both brand new and untethered to some l33t n00b - and that is IT. Everything else is going to be volunteer work or helping my homies out. I find myself saying this about everything now, and meaning it. The money isn’t worth it. There’s too many other truly fulfilling things that I want to be doing, and I absolutely can not let money keep me locked in this routine anymore. It was tricky when we both made the leap to being self-employed, but we figured it out and we’re way happier than when we were corporate whores. And it’s time to migrate again, to somewhere not just closer to fulfillment, but all the way there.
Fasten your seatbelt world, you’ll be hearing statements like this from a lot of people in the next few years.
PS - Reminder to self: What did you do after the head-scratching e-mail arrived from ye olde timid client? Sean and I put on an enlightening audio program, ate a huge green salad, sprawled out on the living room floor and cat napped. Win!
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May 20, 2008
Just a blip. Then it vanished.
The time is coming, my lovelies, for me to do some more website housecleaning. More links and pages will disappear. Or rather, be moved. The world is changing, evolving into a literal Panopticon, and the Internet is helping. I’m doing it to myself with this journal. For this reason, privacy is becoming even more important to me. If you find yourself wanting to journey with me, send me an e-mail. Say hello. I’ll take you with me when I go.
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April 30, 2008
Gunna Get My Meek On
I am in for an ego obliterating experience. **Derek “Stormy” Waters voice** Know how I knew?
I keep encountering these amazing people online - radical peeps who share similar goals and values - and finding all these ways that I am “doing better”. *long slow whistle, shiftin’ in my seat* Uh, yah. But I’m human. I falter. There’s no way I can stay on this high horse for long. I can sort of see the reckoning in the distance, if I squint, but I don’t so I’m mostly trying to prepare…
There’s this couple that came to lead worship at my church a couple times. They are so… gah, just such beautiful, sweet, honest hippies trying to do their best. They have a baby, 18 months. Since his birth, their focus and “achievements” seem to have slipped. (A very common occurrence for new parents, possibly inevitable, I gather.) They are still AMAZING people, and I am in awe of their art and lives… and yet, I can still easily work up a little lip curl when I read about how he ate at McDonald’s or they shopped at a mega store. I’m glad I’m putting this to words. It’s pretty impossible to ignore what an asshole I am being.
What the fuck is it that allows this mental disconnect? I GET that we’re all flawed humans, and that I’m no better or worse than anyone… and yet I still strive for something near perfection. It’s like my challenge to the world. “Just cuz y’all will settle doesn’t mean I will. Watch, I’ll show you how close to perfect we humans can be, so pay attention…” Sean and I call it efficiency. This is one of MY WORDS. I joke that someday I will get the cliched Old English lettered stomach or back tattoo of “value” or “efficiency”. They’re beautiful concepts to me. Utilitarian. Ahimsa: the greatest good and the least harm. This is what makes me feel that zero waste and a neutral carbon footprint are totally do-able… in my lifetime. But something’s not really clicking in me so that my ego shuts up and applauds all effort without simultaneously judging it. Yes, congrats on remembering to bring your cloth bags to the store, but your hybrid in the parking lot still only gets 45MPG. Fucking foreign economy cars were doing that before hybrids existed, remember? And that’s still miles per gallon of PETROL. *facepalm* See, cuz my scooter, 80MPG or not, still runs on gas, and my backup vehicle is a God-awful gas guzzler that’s almost as old as my parents. But I’m the “better person”?
Sketch comedy is so perfect a medium for me. Ready for pithy, pissy observations, laced with derision. Gag PSAs are actually our focus over here. We have these years-long lists that we add to when we come up with a new, clever way of teaching/mocking “wrong” things. OK, one example… the food “chain”. Sigh. Think 50’s science film, dude in a lab coat, thick black glasses, short dippety-do quaff, and impenetrable deadpan. Black and white time-pocked film with the beeps in-between sections. Long wooden pointer at the ready, Mr. Scientist (who probably just works QC at Dupont) taps the appropriate section of the large chalk drawing behind him. “You see, the plants are at the bottom.” *board tap* “Animals are the second link in the chain and they eat the plants.” *board tap* “Then there’s us, humans.” *proud smile* “We eat the animals.” *looks at board for next step where humans and plants interact, closing the “chain”. His smile vanishes. He looks nervously at the camera for a few seconds, unsure what to say.* (I can’t decide if I want to break convention and go stupid here, showing a casket that makes it impossible for even a human’s remains to be a part of the circle of life, or just leave it open ended.) Cut to a shot of a happy family devouring steak breakfasts or something and a voice over summarizing “That’s how science works kiddies; be part of the food chain and eat an animal right now!” Gah, I need a better final line, but yah. Food chain is a joke and rather than just saying it, I’d always rather make a caricature of it and make people see that ridiculousness for themselves.
In summary, could I be a bigger jive turkey?
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April 16, 2008
Commitment to My Progress
K, there’s more than a few things that I have drafted to write about in here, but I gotta prioritize and go with my gut. My gut says talk about the following…
I saw a blog post recently where this very awesome person mentioned her visual way of tracking her progress. Insert photo of her last month’s calendar, where each day had a large “clean & sober” sticker on it. Wow, I didn’t know they had those. Seeing the photo made me realize how quiet I have been about it. That’s always been my way when I stop drinking for a while. Mum’s the word, outta sight and outta mind. In the past I can see that this was a way to avoid keeping sobriety permanent. I never made a note of the day that I stopped/started either. If I didn’t tell anybody that I was trying to stay clean, nobody could call me on it when they found a drink in my hand! And that’s exactly how the yo-yo has gone since I started drinking in earnest in 1995. It has actually worked well for me this time around because it’s forced me to live into the idea that I must be in control of my thoughts. When I start to think about booze, I immediately tell myself “sorry but that’s 100% not part of my reality right now” and the thought generally disappears. Tight ship, baby. Nothing has leaked in yet. But having Sean to be my accountability partner has been very helpful. I feel that being more honest about it will also be helpful in the long run. I hate to look bad and go back on my word. It’s not the most holistic method of improving one’s life, but the possible embarrassment and shame of showing everyone my failure is a strong motivator… I’m almost 4 months without a drop of alcohol!
Another hard line I’ve taken with myself is probably only 2 weeks solid thus far. Again, I never write down dates because I don’t want to face the failure if I fuck up. Anyway, I’m off celebrity culture. OFF, OMG OFF FOREVER. I never cared for it, but when I got bored I would allow myself to go to a couple sites and just let my eyes glaze over as I mindlessly scrolled through the gossip. Damn, that was hard to admit. I couldn’t understand why I would do that, when consciously I believe that the celebrity culture is poison and don’t even watch or own a TV. In retrospect, just 2 little weeks away from it, I think I can see the lure. It was that mindlessness and the continual updates. No other sites that I visit are updated that quickly. Green news and craftivism and art just aren’t the commodities that the entertainment industry produces. (Or rather, they aren’t valued as such just yet. I see the shift, though. What was once labeled stupid hippie shit is now available in slickly designed packages at your local Target.) And absorbing the antics of someone else’s unfathomably wealthy and unconscious lifestyle does not take any effort. After a hard day’s coding, I could just stare and scroll and shake my head until I was even more bored and had to close the browser tab. See, words are powerful! Even though I’ve been thinking about this lately, seeing the words really rams the point home. I was just making the same bad choice over and over, and there’s no excuse for it and nothing good came from that. So that chapter is done in my life. I look forward to the day when I go to Muxtape and don’t tell Sean “I only heard of this band because some guy in it was dating a ’supermodel’ and then he got caught doing a fuckload of drugs over and over”. Besides, I still hear snippets about entertainers who are using their fame to promote awesome change. Natalie and Alicia could fill a book with their efforts.
So this is my calendar, filled with invisible stickers that proclaim my victory over habits that brought me down. I make the choice again every day to keep drinking and gossip where they belong: as chapters in my life that are over for good. BAM.
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March 20, 2008
This is Right and True
Development of Habit. Proper Perspective. These things change us. They have changed me.
T’was a time when all was habitually perceived as bleak. On more than a few occasions this is still true. However, on the whole, this is no longer the case. The more time passes, I see the balance shift in favor of positivity and good habits. Most of the time- and this is a reminder to self- I feel ALIVE and abuzz with endless possibilities. All throughout the day, I am writing and typing and actually working on ideas. It feels wonderful. The way I think life is supposed to feel. Like an expansive candy store. But more than that, too. In those times of feeling like a repository for genius plans, I also feel something unifying that connects me and everything else. The Blanket Thing, as I Heart Huckabees phrased it. Isn’t that interesting? And encouraging? In the recently read Deathhunter, the main character spoke of feeling an “oceanic unity” when he almost drowned as a child. The phrase was repeated throughout the story, and has stuck with me. It was a bliss not known in normal life; one that hinted at the perfection that lay just ahead. I wonder if humans experience these feelings of oneness when they are on the trail of something absolutely right and true. Hah, another phrase I have taken to using a lot lately. I tell Sean, “It may seen indulgent, but I am positive that those mountain of cookies we just ate were right and true so I regret nothing.” My, but that sounds far out of context. It just means A #1 appropriate truth that couldn’t be any other way.
And so today I celebrate having a brain that works so fervently to push boundaries and create things that are authentic. I can scarcely begin a sliver of the projects that I imagine, but that’s what all the years ahead of me are for. Chip away every day: this is my newly discovered joy.
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March 15, 2008
Can I Adopt an Old Person?
Sometimes it’s almost like a movie how my consciousness zooms back for a wide shot and gets a glance at the Big Picture. But it goes fuzzy fast. Realizations lose their magnitude in the face of daily realities. They face off with other realizations, testing one another’s mettle.
I’m playing solitaire this Saturday morning in an obvious attempt to stay at the outskirts of genuine thought. It’s been a laughable morning of trying to stay off the Internet, clicking a few things and getting searches lined up for when this period of quasi-reflection is over. It never ceases to amaze me how much modern life (aka: how shit be) stifles that necessary skill and need of quiet evaluation. When was the last time any of us took 30 minutes to just be still and listen?
Oh irony, I’ve won a game. I rarely win anymore now that I’m about 4 years out of practice from 8 hour days of playing it in an office environment. Solitaire probably saved me from slitting throats. And years before that, hours of majong made the “making ugly shit on an old mac” portion of my Graphic Design training bearable. Well, I did make that talking donut graphic…
So sometimes I see glimpses of answers that touch everything. They are brief and brilliant and inspiring and scary and sometimes feel that they truly do touch every molecule of existence. They come more frequently the older I get (although I’m quite aware that it could be a, well, awareness thing versus just time passing) and that makes me wonder how older people handle their realizations. Truths like there are no 2nd hand revelations, some people must make their own mistakes, and you can’t substitute anything for age and experience… these make me wonder if many older people (what exactly “older” is, I haven’t decided today, but I’m picturing rest homes) are sitting on their realizations for those very reasons. Youth can not become wise without traveling the road themselves, therefore we elders must unfortunately watch them make their ‘glorious mistakes’. Is this it? Are adults that have learned their arse from their elbow actually chock-full of solutions that they believe youth would not be ready for? *shakes head violently* Surely people are learning truths that could “fix it all up there”, right? Oh, I must believe that age can bring wisdom otherwise my career as a misanthrope will continue forever. And yet, if our elders do have some answers, and yet do not share, do not commit themselves to imparting what they can on us stupid youngins, then… Well, first what can we do to change that, and second, why does everything I contemplate end in me hating everyone and everything? Anger seems to be at the root of everything that I do, I am ashamed to say. And yet I commit it to writing because I hope that improvement will follow confession. Oh, my head and heart are heavy today.
I wonder, but don’t think long enough, about what makes me leave certain entries pubic versus password protected. I will get an answer today before I publish this. It feels important not to keep this one squirreled away with my rants and tears.
The habit of journaling was just that, years ago. It started in childhood when I was sent to my room (which felt like all the time), and really blossomed in junior and high school, as I wrote instead of speaking with my peers. In 7th grade, during a sad “computer class” with monochrome macs, I vividly remember writing a letter to Jesus because the other kids seemed to be one big clique that wouldn’t include the weird homeschooled girl. I’d never written to him before, but it was all I could think of doing as I died a bit inside. Sitting alone, silently and with nothing to do because I always finished my work quickly (unhampered by conversation), I heard them start to whisper about me. I flipped over the red worksheet that I had been given and started “Dear J.C.” and basically tried to pray/write my way through their alienating comments for the rest of the period. It was easy. It flowed. In 12th grade, (when I was in remedial everything because of Michigan-to-California graduation requirement differences, thanks for fucking nothing Michigan) the case was repeated again. I’d already spent 2 years hiding my way through high school in Michigan, writing stories and journal entries during all that “downtime” in class where the popular kids sat behind me and talked about getting fucked up and fucking each other. It was automatic. My hand finishes writing the assignment, it begins writing in my spiral bound journal. They whisper about me, and I write faster, harder. With all those freshman and “fellow” remedial students, it was always a zoo. Their words were even farther removed, and I felt like an entirely different species. I suppose many teenagers feel that way. At any rate, this is where my journaling habit began and died.
In 1999 I had a website on gurlpages.com where I began journaling again. Truthfully, the habit only withered slowly in-between graduation in 1997 and today. I was just leaving a horrible relationship and we had just moved cross-country and didn’t know anybody, compounded by the fact that I had learned no positive coping skills besides writing. All I knew was anger and violence, or withdrawal and journaling. After we screamed at each other, we journaled. If we could stand the reflection. When the Internet presented itself as a new journaling medium (and Ultimate Distraction), I think I mostly gave up paper and pen. It’s been downhill from there.
One way of looking at my journaling had been through a lens of disdain for the weakness and femininity of it. Introspection seemed a flimsy and stereotypical way of dealing, of growing. After all, it produced no visible or tangible change. It was part of an outpouring that occurred when I learned to “toughen up” and put up a wall to try and hide my weaknesses. (And oh, how I sobbed listening to The Wall over and over, wondering how Roger Waters could have survived and yet had not reached sainthood for such poetry. Remembering too, how my copy of the double CD had been so cleverly stolen from Target by my sister. Memory truly is a web.)
The years are all so hazy. What was once crystal clear in it’s pain has tried very hard to shuffle it’s way out of my long-term memory. I’m not sure when these phases occurred, but I can now recognize that I have existed as an open and closed person. That lifelong obsession with finding my other, my doppleganger, lost twin, soul mate, WTFE… it kept my heart open until perhaps I was about 20. Ironic, as that is when I was married, supposedly to the one that I had been searching for. Up until that point, I sometimes related very well with the intense emotional states of a Scorpio or Cancer. I wanted the mutually beneficial, vice-like grip of that relationship: scorpion and crab, embracing forever, and standing united against all else. The theme of people being afraid to love, of intimacy, seemed to be the movie of the week. It was everywhere, and I laughed at it! “How boring’, I though, “what a waste of time to live without finding and having a partner”. With stoicism, I said “tis better to have loved and lost then never loved at all”. And in true adolescent fashion, I headed down that road without even knowing it. It was in those early Internet years that I remember writing in my online journal about toughening my skin. Having my heart broken but soldiering on more safely. In addition to everything else going on, perhaps the final shove into terrified hard-heartedness was a girl who slandered me on her website when I was 20-ish. Everyday it seemed like a new fight with her, and that taught me to further examine each and every word that I say. It took the fun out of journaling to hear my words thrown back at me, no longer sounding like me at all. It wasn’t her. It was a lot of things piling up on top of one another, with her sitting very near the apex. Sometimes I want to hug that girl, after all the time that has passed. But sometimes I still want to rip her apart with my bare hands. My growth is slow.
I suppose what disturbs me most right now is the stark contrast between the young person who actually believed in an ideal mate, and the person that I have become who is equally convinced that I am meant to be alone. It’s as though my very core has been replaced. As an imaginative child, not only did I know that my other half existed, I was convinced that I had an entire family out there who I had to find. As an adult, logic and experience have smashed down that idea. In it’s place is the near certainty that I was created to be single. Oh God. It was like a knife to my heart to type that. For all its glory, being alone is not what I truly want. It is what I will settle for because being in a poorly paired relationship is, to me, settling even lower.
This hand of solitaire is starting out very well.
I don’t believe that God plans crap for anybody. Lessons, some of them very painful, we can call down on ourselves, but His plan is never for “kinda OK” or “good enough”. I guess deep inside I still feel that God must have someone waiting for me. If I let my vision go soft, I can see my twin living in some jungle waiting for me to complete her. Whether that’s a foolish dream or a true vision, I do not yet know. But I do know that I am not interested in paring with anybody less than literally made for me. The lesson that I think I am meant to understand (among so many) is that no human can actually complete me, and that I must learn to feel loved and fulfilled even if it’s just me hiding alone in a jungle and having a relationship with God only. Maybe He won’t give me my twin until I know that heart and soul. Maybe I will see that I have already found that person, but that we are simply broken humans. Dunno yet. All those youthful dreams of becoming a contemplative nun (despite not being Catholic)… were they escapism to preserve my wounded heart, or a whisper from God about where I will someday be ready to exist? Ditto with the dreams of a long lost twin.
The reason I am publishing this is the same reason that I have an affinity for closet exhibitionism. It allows me to honestly scrutinize and express and be myself, and yet have the buffer of anonymity. Nobody in the building up the block or on the Internet actually knows me. I can expose myself in front of strangers as long as I don’t have to be aware of their responses or have any interaction with them. It’s a go-nowhere feedback loop, but a rather comforting one.
That feels like “all” I have to say this morning. I have no answers, but my questions and theories have been better examined. I feel a bit lighter. I should go create something. And probably have another good cry before this time of quiet is broken.
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March 9, 2008
Rice Dream Moca Pies FTW!
4/2/08 Update: Did I say something…? “George” from Hain-Celestial sent me a canned snail mail in response to the e-mail below. Totally expected. But inside were 3 coupons… for .55 off… of a specialty Rice Dream product line that I have never seen in stores. And I have several super-hippie-vegan stores in my area. If that’s not a backhanded “take your free pies and shove em’”, I don’t know what is. Anybody want a whopping .55 off your next purchase of Rice Dream Supreme (which may or may not actually exist IRL)? As Geoffrey Jellineck’s landlord would say, while doing thusly to yonder useless coupons, “crumple, crumple, crumple”.
Time for a positive letter to a company. One that I love for this particular product…
Hello Imagine/Hain-Celestial, Inc… I wanted to tell you how much that I and my partner love your Rice Dream Mocha Pies. (We have the mint flavor sometimes, too.) They are everything that we dream of in a dessert; delicious, vegan, low GI sweetened, very affordable, and mocha flavor is amazing, too. An expansion in the use of organic ingredients would be wonderful. An organic mocha pie would probably be heaven. I would seriously buy stock in your company. (Not sure if that’s even possible…) Anyway, those pies have brought us both a bit of happiness and we wanted to say thanks. So… thanks!
Please don’t ever change. Well, I’m sure you’ll find ways to improve, but please keep Rice Dream Mocha Pies the same forever and ever. They are PERFECT. And in the words of David Cross, “In closing, please send as many free products as possible”. Hah hah. (But that would be OK.)
I signed off “Your Biggest Pie Fans”. lawls!!1 Sometimes I do OK stuff.
So uh… are you feeling inspired to write to anyone now?
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March 7, 2008
Protected: Themes
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February 27, 2008
Grand Daddy Purple
February 27th about 9PM in San Diego
It was warm for real today. No idea what “temperature”, but I rate it “perfect”. We stood with our backs to the dining area window, the sun setting in earnest and just beginning to turn violent shades. Eating pitas with raw delights inside, and talking about how all the people that walk by a floor below don’t “touch their junk” in our alleyway. “All these people…” he started today. “Everybody’s driving and walking alone… and nobody’s junk is hanging out… nobody’s touching their junk, or…” he trailed off. We lawled. It’s always about junk with you. But that’s OK, especially because I… well, he knew about my things already. Moving on.
Living in an urban area that also has (and is cultivating) respect for community is really pretty badass. I meet, for fleeting moments, these wild and wonderful people. We relate all conversations to each other, and I try to give a flawless delivery. We come home or call and within the minute say something to the effect of, “Duuude, I talked to this GUY today”. Eyes widen and the other party smiles widely and nods in understanding. We tell people are weird stories way, way, way more than people are so rad stories.
This tale can be summed up thusly: Right now I’m in my chonies and a t-shirt (that I dumpstered from the alley behind my house!!!) because the weather has been that sublime today. I so happy!
And note to self: Interest in 2008 Halloween finally appeared in the last week or so. Whew. I quietly feared that I was becoming too square. Psych! Just last night, while watching Shaun of the Dead for the umteenth time and playing Zombies!!! Mall Walker expansion game, I had an idea for a combo Halloween decoration and/or prank. It was sparked by the realization: we never see printed matter pertaining to zombie outbreaks. There is a very logical reason to this, but the average person has not thought about their zompocalypse strategy so they certainly won’t have the same realization about undead signage. And San Diego zombie walks happen! This is a recipe for success.
And also, I think I may end up loving Yoko Ono. I’ve been reading all the John Lennon biographies at my library and they say little about her. What is mentioned, even when- or maybe especially when- it’s meant to be unflattering, sounds interesting to say the least. Some of the things I read, her quotes, they’re just… beautiful and simple and true. I wonder how many Ono biographies there are.
And finally: I still have 2 crushes. Still! One I am writing about, and might eventually have to loveknife. Oh hah hah did I type that? And leave it there? tee hee. How’s “Love You Like a Scorpio” for the story title?
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