May As Well Be Me

STRIKE!!!

2012-01-18T10:41:00.002-05:00

Coming late to the Revolution

2012-01-15T22:34:00.000-05:00

My new year didn’t start at quite as I hoped it would. New Year’s Eve was a rollercoaster, followed by a hang over and a week and half long sickness that caused me to cancel a mini break that I had been looking forward to for quite a while.

But my sinuses are no longer struggling to see which can fracture my skull first so things are looking up and it’s about time I stopped wallowing and started making something of 2012. So, I’ve joined the revolution.

I have been watching Rosianna complete Channel 4’s challenges with more than a little bit of envy for the past 14 days before it occurred to me that I didn’t have to be envious. So what if I don’t live in Britain and watch Channel 4? The internet doesn’t discriminate (or at least has no way of knowing that my gmail account isn’t located in the United Kingdom)!

I need something to shake me a bit, get me out of myself and my fear and general malaise and laziness. So this is me joining the revolution!

Day 15: Watch a Classic Movie that you’ve never seen

Which meant that I now had validation for sitting on the couch. “I’m not being lazy I’m being part of the revolution! No, really! Could you get me some chips?”

I read A Clockwork Orange in college but I’d never seen the movie, until now. It is brilliant and disturbing and heart wrenching and did I mention that it was disturbing? I’m not going to write about it in depth because the film has been around for 40 years and I’m sure it has been dissected and analyzed to death by now. And I’m not a film critic. And I just don’t feel like it.

What I do feel like is getting some strawberries and watching the bits of the Golden Globes that have Ricky Gervais in them.

I’ll be back tomorrow for the next challenge.

Viva La Revolution!

Always Winter and Never Christmas

2011-12-20T01:21:00.003-05:00

I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been waiting till I settled into a better frame of mind before hoisting myself upon the masses but it’s winter and my mood has been getting worse, not better so I figured fuck it, the only people who stumble upon my blog are Russians searching for depressing sentences* so, really, this is right up their alley.

So, here’s the deal, I’m depressed.

Well, when I’m at work I’m pretty much ok. I do my job in a surprisingly cheerful manner. I help out and joke around with my co-workers. It’s not an act. I’m actually feeling what most would describe as happiness, or at least contentment. Then I get home and it’s like I stepped through the wardrobe into a Narnia without Aslan.

The funk has been slowly building for a while. I wasn’t happy in my relationship so I ended it. And then I became more-un-happier. Then my brother got engaged. Then my cousin got engaged. And it’s not that I’m not happy for them (cause I really, really am), it’s just that I would be happier for them if I were happier for me.

The cherry on the top was developing a silly little office crush that made me feel like an awkward twelve year old. And believe me when I tell you that I did not enjoy twelve the first time around and was not happy to go there again. I’m thirty, damnit, (God, that’s frightening to see typed out) when does the "I am woman hear me roar" kick in?

I miss my ex. And I miss having a boyfriend. Especially now with Christmas just about here. I want to snuggle and watch The Muppet Christmas Carol. I want someone to get me and love me and hold my hand while we’re walking to the car. But I don’t have any of that and it doesn’t look like I’ll be checking them off my list anytime soon so instead, I wallow.

This weekend I bailed on attempts at social interaction so that I could stay home and self medicate with hot chocolate and ABC Family holiday specials the way alcoholics self medicate by getting knackered and assaulting police officers.

Something called “Holiday in Handcuffs” made me cry. It’s about a woman (Melissa Joan Hart) who suffers a bit of a nervous break down and kidnaps a man (Mario Lopez) so that she can bring him home for Christmas to pretend to be her boyfriend. And then they fall in love. You have no idea how embarrassed I am typing this right now. There were actual tears falling out of my face and I think I’m going to go find a sword to fall on because really what’s the point of going on if you're jealous of Stockholm Syndrome love?

I also watched “Christmas Cupid” and “Christmas Caper” and then I fell into a coma.

The thing is, on the grand scheme of things I have a pretty great life. I get that. I’m grateful for that. It just doesn’t feel all that great right now. It’s pretty messed up how the one thing I’m missing makes all the things I do have (great friends, family, job, roof over my head, a savings account, free time to do things that I love) seem so insignificant. It’s just wrong. But I feel what I feel and all I can do is push through the forest and hopefully the ground will start to thaw and it will be Spring somewhere.

*No, seriously, I looked up my stats there is a surprising amount of Russian traffic here- I really have no idea why. Also, an alarmingly large number of people google “depressing sentences” and find my blog. Most depressing sentence ever Is the 3d result. Look at me making a name for myself on the googles.

Yay!

2011-12-07T23:17:00.001-05:00

Yeah, I'm really really bad at blogging consistently. It's a good thing I only have 3 followers. No one to disappoint!

I have a new story up at Toasted Cheese. I wrote it for their Three Cheers and a Tiger contest. One of the guidelines was that it had to be written in a weekend, so, please be gentle people!

Toasted Announcements: The December issue of Toasted Cheese is here!: http://bit.ly/v8X7SG

you just keep on trying till you run out of cake

2011-10-19T22:20:00.001-04:00

Walking through the streets of Manhattan and you see a guy dressed like this.

Now, is he attending the con or does he just live here? (photo from Geeks of Doom) I heart NY.

I'm fairly certain if all the cosplayers at NYCC had gotten together they could have successfully robbed a series of banks in Manhattan. Something to think about for next year. Nerds of the World Unite and Take Over!

NYCC '11

Even though the stark underground panel rooms of the Javitz Center remind me of a poorly funded city college (I know, I went to one, it was all eerily familiar) I have a special place in my heart for NYCC. It may not have glitz and glamour and celebrities swinging from palm trees like it's more fashionable sibling, SDCC, but I can't ever seem to get tickets to SDCC and NYCC is in my back yard so, you know, <3. I go to cons for the panels. The show floor always kinda leaves me meh, every time I see something shiny either I can't fight my way up to it or the crowd pushes me past it and instead of struggling for a better look I decide to just search for it online. Where I'll probably find it cheaper anyway. The one exception to my show floor ennui was last year when Jeff Lemire took the time to not only sign my Sweet Tooth #1 and The Nobody but also leave me with some lovely little doodles. That was awesome. Last year I went from panel to panel to panel, often forgetting to eat, sometimes remembering to pee. I got into every panel I wanted, even the insanely popular Walking Dead preview. Last year was awesome. This year there were more attendees and less panels. The Felicia Day panel was full before I woke up in the morning. People started lining up for the Avengers panel approximately 8 hours before it started. So, NYCC was a bit of a mixed bag for me this year. Here's a run down of the good, the bad, and the ugly of NYCC '11. Or, at least, what I got to experience of it.The Good:The Science Chanel Panel:

Michio Kaku. I can't imagine ever not being a Michio Kaku fan girl. I could listen to him talk for hours, days, maybe even years if someone orders out for pizza. He is the Barack Obama of Science. My only gripe is that he was part of a panel instead of having his own again. The panel was excellent though. I LOVE the Science Chanel and I am very much excited for both Ridley Scott's new series, The Prophets of Science Fiction, and for Trek Nation.

Brian Greene: His books make my head hurt. I love things that make me feel stupid, like there's always going to be something else to learn and I'm never going to understand it all no matter how hard I try. The clips from his upcoming NOVA special were the perfect balance of cheesy visual effects and mind blowing science. Also, Brian Greene is vegan. Yay.

Brian Greene sitting at the table, Sweet Tooth sitting in front of me.

Nerdist Podcast Live:
Ok, so TECHNICALLY this wasn't part of the con. So what. It was probably the best part of MY con.
1. This podcast has some really awesome fans, the kind of people that make standing in line for an hour, and then watching the same 4 video game trailers over and over and over, actually an enjoyable experience.

2. Matt Mira's stand-up. Everyone was funny to the point of making my face hurt but Matt Mira's set was by far my favorite of the night (don't fight boys, I love you all).

3. The whole darn thing was just a bundle of good times. And there were posters. Got mine signed. I never do well with the whole autograph thing though, mostly because if I like you enough to be willing to stand on line for your autograph then I probably want to impress you and once I want to impress someone I almost certainly never will. So I wind up standing around awkwardly aloof. Which explains my track record with guys. Yeah...

I only took one really crappy picture of Chris Hardwick. Now that I'm posting this blog I'm wishing I had some shots of all the guys but I was just too busy laughing to think about it at the time. c'est la vie.

God, that guy's skinny.

THE BAD

Disorganization: How frustrating is it to wait on line for over an hour only to watch people just walk right in to the panel you're waiting for.

Line Cutters: Yes, fezzes are cool but if you're dressed as The Doctor, chick, you should use your powers for good!

The Roddenberry Panel: It was almost exactly the same panel as last year. So, that was kind of a disappointment.

Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way: The panel was a misnomer. In reality it was an extended Q&A session where all the questions and answers were the same and no one told us "the way" to "break into" comics. What I took away from the panel is that there really isn't a way to break into comics, especially if you're a writer. Just keep writing and cross your fingers a lot. Though, it's kind of hard to do both at the same time.

THE UGLY

The Kevin Smith Clusterfuck:

Sigh. Just, you know, sigh. So many things went wrong that we just wound up getting a refund and leaving. Which totally bummed me out. We were really looking forward to seeing the Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Podcast. But: 1 Javitz Center employee yelled at us for being in the wrong line (we weren't), cursed out volunteers for putting us in the wrong line (they didn't, all the volunteers were pretty awesome) and made us move from the front of the line we had been on for 1/2 hr to the back of a crazy long line. Which made me cranky. 2 we paid $50 for prime seats only to have people who paid a lot less sit next to and in front of us, which made me wonder what exactly we were paying the extra money for. =crankier 3 The show didn't start until after 8pm which meant we would have had to leave early in order to get the VIP seating for the nerdist podcast that we also paid extra for (I broke out the big bucks this year). So, we got our money back and headed down to the Gramercy. We've seen Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes before, hadn't seen the Nerdist boys, so, we made a choice. It sucks that we had to choose but that's life. And the awesomeness of the Nerdist et al. assuaged my nerd fury.

So, NYCC 2012? I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe I'll just go to World Science Fest instead.

On a less ambivavlent note I'm listening to Jonathan Coulton's new album Artificial Heart right now. It's being beamed to me from the cloud. The future is now, people. It is not just some kind of wonderful (eric stoltz, anyone?) but all kinds of wonderful. You should stop reading and go download it, he's much cooler than I am anyway.

Yay Jeff Lemire!

It's not real until it's on facebook

2011-10-09T22:47:00.000-04:00

I’m thirty, newly single, and I’m in New Hampshire listening to my little brother and his fiancée discus table linens and entrée options with wedding coordinators at a series of country clubs and hotel ballrooms.

A high school football coach is screaming at me from somewhere inside my head. “Are you crying? Are you a little sissy girl? Do you want your mommy? SUCK IT UP! Stop being a baby! PUSH THROUGH THE PAIN!!!” I blink the tears back into my eyes and flip through a brochure of happy brides and over the top bouquets and cocktail hours with too much food. I’m a grown-up. I will not cry over flower arrangements. I won’t. I think I can… I think I can… I think I can…

A week ago my boyfriend and I broke up. I spent that weekend lying on the couch drowning in regret and reality TV. I cried for four days and wrote tragic journal entries that need to be burned. I wanted to stand on his front lawn with a boom box over my head. I wanted to crawl into his bed and pretend like none of this had ever happened, to feel him wrapped around me again and know that everything was going to be okay. We broke up for all sorts of sensible reasons but none of that seemed to matter anymore. I hurt and I wanted it to stop. This was my first real relationship and thus, my first real break-up. Which is kind of like getting chicken pox for the first time as an adult; it could kill you.

There were lots of emo texts and phone calls at 2 am and my friends all assure me that it gets better. (Though, they could have just been saying that because they wanted to go back to sleep.) It has gotten somewhat better. I’ve moved on from the sharp, stabbing, I can’t breathe or feel anything but pain phase to the dull aching almost numb, I’m never going to love anyone again phase that comes with a free order of eating your emotions in the form of food that makes you feel a little better for a little bit before making you feel so much worse for so much longer.

Before I can put the cookie dough away and move on with my life I have to update my relationship status on facebook. I’ve been hiding behind it so I don’t have to talk about the break-up, and so I can swim around in denial a little longer; it’s not real until it’s on facebook. I may not have a boyfriend anymore but I can sign into facebook and see “Michelle is in a relationship with…” Even if it’s not true it’s a lie I’m not quite ready to stop telling.

I’m quite looking forward to the next phase, where I try to loose all the weight I’ve gained while eating my emotions, and I take up a new hobby. Maybe needlepoint. Or finally cooking up some of the recipes in that Low-fat Vegan cookbook I haven’t opened. Or… who’s up for badminton? But to get there I have to let go. We may have broken-up but there is a difference between breaking-up and letting go. And I will; I’ll get there. I’ll let facebook know that I’m single and I’ll change my phone’s wallpaper from that picture of us in Boston to a picture of my cat.

But first I’m going to go get some cookies.

Random musings apropos of nothing

2011-09-28T14:39:00.002-04:00

I put "write a blog" on my to-do list today and I really like checking things off my to-do list, so, here I am...

Most of the stuff that has been whirling through my head over the past 10 days would probably make for exceptionally good reading, but this isn't the forum for those thoughts just yet so..

um...

I like Starbucks oatmeal. They give you brown sugar and nuts and stuff. And you can get a grande tea and oatmeal for exactly $5. Breakfast of Champions, bitches.

Fleet Foxes make pretty music. I wish I made pretty music. I write pretty words sometimes. Do you write pretty music? Do you want to be my Johnny Marr?

I haven't listening to The Smiths in a while. I need to do that. Also, have you seen that video of David Tennant dancing to "Boy with the thorn in his side"?

Yeah, I just stopped writing to go watch that on youtube. This video is probably my favorite thing in existence. Watching David Tenant lip sync to the Smiths makes me tingly in all my naughty nerdy parts.

doobie doobie doo... I wonder what's going on at twitter right now...

Sometimes twitter makes me feel like I'm back in high school:

There's the popular kids: The celebrities and quasi-celebrities that you have crushes on *cough* @nerdist *cough* and really hope they'll read a tweet and think you're awesome and then they'll follow you on twitter and fall in love with you and you'll have lots of nerdy babies you can teach to speak klingon and what? I mean, um...

And there's the indie/artsy kids: not exactly celebrities but they've got awesome twitter feeds and have lots of followers and they write a groovy blog where they talk about crocheting and leading the revolution from their studio apartment and you just know they smoke clove cigarettes and wouldn't give you the time of day but still you tweet at them thinking maybe you won't embarass yourself and maybe you can become hip by association.

And then there's me, and probably a lot of you, with 28 followers (many of which I know are not real people) I have a day job and a cat. And sometimes I write little pieces of fiction that other people like. Can you stand all that glamour? Every time I tweet at someone I don't really know I kind of feel like I'm asking them to prom.

I'm 30, a "grown-up" who pays her bills on time and has people who love her. So why do I keep signing up for social experiments that make me relive the most awkward and debilitating, humiliating, depressing, moments of my existence?

Why? Lean in and I'll tell you a secret. Deep down underneath all the awkwardness and insecurity and fear, I really do think that I'm cool. Ok, well maybe "cool" isn't the adjective I'm looking for, but you know what I'm damn funny and somewhat entertaining and sometimes i'd even go so far as to say interesting. I have a twitter account because, fuck the adolescent fears that just won't die, I'M AWESOME AND THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW.

Which, I'd wager, is why you have twitter too.

This blog was brought to you by Fleet Foxes, celebrity crushes, writer's block, and caffeine. Yay, caffeine.

Dip Trip Flip Fantasia: Or things my English teacher should have told me

2011-09-18T15:59:00.000-04:00

Remember when we were kids and we couldn’t wait to be grown-ups because then nobody would be able to tell us what to do?

HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA

Oh, sweet ignorance of youth, how I miss you so.

When we were kids if we didn’t do what we were told or didn’t do it well enough there were repercussions, like detention or being grounded or not getting that shiny thing we were so sure we couldn’t live without. As grown-ups if we don’t do what we’re told or don’t do it well enough we get fired and and they stop giving us those lovely paychecks we use to pay for things like the house we live in and the food we eat and if we don’t get someone else to give us and job and start doing what they tell us we end up down by the river fighting with plastic sporks to defend our cardboard box and collection of Barbie dolls heads we found floating in the muck.

If they had told us this when we were kids none of us would have made it past 23.

Growing up, daydreaming about being a writer, I imagined book tours that let me travel the world and have exciting adventures with interesting people, signing books for adoring fans and generally being fabulous all the time. I imagined days filled with hours and hours of writing. Back in the blissfully ignorant days of my youth when I imagined being a writer I imagined being a writer. That’s it. I didn’t imagine I’d be spending 40 hours a week doing other stuff for money and squeezing in writing in the few glorious moments I had a couple of brain cells to spare and wasn’t lured by the siren call of pizza, booze, telly.

What my 7th grade English teacher should have told me when she was encouraging me to be a writer was: “You should be a writer, you’re very good. But the most important thing you need to know, more important than writing every day or wearing sunscreen, is that you’re gonna need a fucking day job. And you’re just going to have to deal with it. You’re not going to get a million dollar book deal right out of college and be able to live the life I’m sure you’ve been imagining. You may never actually make any money for anything that you write and you know what? You’re just going to have to bend over and take it. If that doesn’t sound like something you’re up for you should maybe consider reevaluating your dreams.”

She didn’t do that so here I am, 30 years old, nursing a cold mocha at Starbucks on my day off, and trying not to think about the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow. Still, this is what I want to do. As long as some of my words make it out there to someone I’ll continue to bend over and take it from the powers that be in exchange for a paycheck.

If Ms. Seventh Grade English Teacher had warned me instead of encouraging me to continue writing and giving me a pretty little journal at the end of the year I may have given the path I was on a serious rethinking and given up the long and winding road to literary obscurity in order to pursue the much more sensible dream of Broadway Stardom.

Nerd Therapy Torchwood: Miracle Day

2011-09-10T20:40:00.002-04:00

Do you have any idea how excited I was about this show 2 months ago? And now? Now, I’m just sad. This should have been the most insanely awesome season of Torchwood the world has ever seen.

I loved the darker sexier little brother of Dr. Who when the series premiered. I adore Captain Jack and fell in love with his new cohorts. The show was charming and disturbing, heart breaking and funny. And Welsh. Oh how I miss Ianto and his beautiful Welsh accent. Then came Children of Earth and it was dazzling. Torchwood completely stepped out of the shadow of Dr. Who stood on its own, and blew me completely the fuck away. I waited for 2 years, nearly burning up with the anticipation. What could possibly top this???

Nothing, apparently.

Torchwood: Miracle Day makes me mad, in much the same way that I infuriated most of my teachers growing up. So much potential, so much promise, and yet…

I put off blogging about Miracle Day until it was done hoping beyond hope for Mr. Davies to pull something out of his magic hat that would make me jump back from the screen and flagellate myself for ever having doubted him. I’m still waiting.

I don’t know what happened. They did everything right. They staffed the show with entirely fantastic writers. There is not a single person credited with writing Miracle Day that I wouldn’t kill to learn from or work with. But it just didn’t feel like Torchwood.

Jack and Gwen felt like slim Slitheen wearing Jack and Gwen suits. Esther and Rex didn’t engage me. I still don’t understand why Oswald Danes was there. The only character that grabbed me at all was Jilly.

My boyfriend and I have pretty much decided that Miracle Day might actually have been kind of wonderful if they had edited it down to 3-5 episodes. Also, Also, the reason Jack is immortal isn't because of something special or hinky in his blood but because Rose FREAKIN Tyler decided that he should be a fixed fucking point in time. He never should have been able to have been made mortal and shouldn't have been able to bestow Rose's gift/curse onto anyone else!!! Deep breath in...and out... and nerd rant over.

I don't want to be an armchair quarterback here. Who am I? I have a blog. Oooooh aren’t I just the Big Bad? No. No, I’m not. I’ve written one novel that couldn’t even get past the interns at a single Lit Agency, and a few pieces of flash that have made their way out into the world via online lit mags. That’s it. I’m just a blogger.

After the first couple of episodes the evil blogger in me did want to spew vitriol and tear the whole thing down. But that’s not what this is about. This is me showing my virtual therapist about where the bad man touched me.

This season, it’s like date rape. I invited Torchwood into my dorm room because we had grown to be such good friends then Miracle Day slipped a roofie into my solo cup and I woke up with crabs.

Did I go too far there?

I arrived at Starbucks with the intention of starting the rewrite of my novel with it’s new narrator, so I thought I better blog instead. I wish this post had a purpose, some conclusion to share with you, some piece of enlightenment to add to the world and elucidate truths about the creative process and the journey of mankind so that if anyone who ever watched or worked on Miracle Day happened to stumble upon this blog they would walk away from the computer feeling a bit of closure and hope. It doesn’t. Not even a little bit. So, instead, I leave you with this:

**this picture was shown to me by Patrick Scaffido who is a whiny bitch and wanted you all to know that I didn't find this on my own.

ZOMGKITTIES!!

2011-08-23T14:26:00.000-04:00

Woke up this morning feeling pretty blah. Disturbing dreams, the realization that certain relationships are changing, ending, also, my allergies are causing my brain to drip down the back of my throat. It's okay though, that one was pretty rubbish and I needed to grow a new one anyway.

I've been staring at the blank word processor screen of death for a while now trying to figure out something write, all the while just feeling eh. That's when youtube came to the rescue.

Did you see that! When the moma pulled the kitten in for a closer snuggle wasn't that just the cutest thing ever?!?!

That one was great, right? So educational and informative, full of advice on how to volunteer, and oh yeah, JAGUAR KITTIES ARE SO CUTE!!! Just look at that face! Now, I may not suggest running out and getting one of your own but feel free to put this video on loop if you're having a bad day and in need of a cute fix.

I don't know about you but I'm feeling better already.

If this isn't enough cute for you, never fear, Ginger and I are on the job!

Also, if you're a cat lover check out The Teal Cat Project Helping kitties one tchotchke at a time!

Coulda had a V8

2011-07-29T14:27:00.002-04:00

I've been feeling a lot like celery lately. I've heard people say that it takes more calories to burn celery than there are calories in celery. It's probably not true, just one of those things people say because it feels true.

Right now I'm reading Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link. She makes my best prose look like it was written by a five year old who has been dropped on her head a few times.

After the first few stories I was depressed. (This is not a new phenomenon, just the most recent occurrence.) How could I possibly continue to write when the standard has been set so much higher than I could ever reach?

This was it. Last straw. Game over. No more pretending that I was a writer. I’m turning in my pens and giving up. I'm going to be in this cubicle till the day I die.

Then I thought about what that would really mean. What a life without writing, even bad writing, would be like. A life where the only work I did took place M-F in my itty-bitty cubicle in the insurance industry. I could see that life rolling on and on day after day, being caught up in the waves with only my paycheck to hold on to.

I felt like I was going to throw up and it was awesome. Because that's how I know that I AM a writer. Even if I'm a bad writer, even if no one but my best friend ever reads my books and I have to publish them myself, I'm going to keep writing. No matter how bad I might feel about myself, comparing my work to Kelly Link or Neil Gaiman, or *insert brilliant writer who makes me feel like a stalk of celery here*, not writing feels worse.

I may always have to keep my day job. I may always have to struggle to get writing time in, and struggle to get my writing read, and struggle to keep writing when I feel so mediocre that I can't imagine ever writing anything worth it's weight in ink. The struggle sucks and it makes me wish that I could give it all up and be an accountant, but the struggle is who I am.

I’m a writer not because I can’t imagine doing anything else but because I CAN imagine doing something else and it scares the shit out of me.

What I Read/What I'm Reading/What's Up Next

2011-07-25T12:51:00.000-04:00

WHAT I READ LAST WEEK

The Complete Essex County by Jeff Lemire

I'm a late in life comic nerd and Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth is one main reasons why I now how a pull list at my local comic shop. Lemire is an infuriating talent because he writes interesting, beautiful characters and he can draw them too. The Essex County stories come together to form a wonderful love letter to his home town and to hockey.

Flappers and Philosophers by F Scott Fitzgerald

After watching Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris I hopped on a bit of a Fitzgerald kick, first re-reading The Great Gatsby last week and then downloading this to my kindle. I'm always sort of had a crush on Fitzgerald and these stories only served to make me just the more wistful for a Tardis en route to the Jazz Age.

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

What can I say, I LOVE Scott Pilgrim. LOVE.

Northlanders: Metal by Brian Wood

Brian Wood is fantastic and his historical fiction series of comics, Northlanders, is one of the best things out there right now. Vikings. Who doesn't love vikings? What really keeps me coming back is that each volume tells a different tale from a different time. His protagonists are fierce and flawed and always have you rooting for them even if you don't always agree with them.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Bossypants is not Remembrance of Things Past, so, if you're looking for the meaning of life or moving literature to lift you up where you belong then Bossypants may not be for you. But I'm pretty sure you were able to figure that out from the title and the cover photo (sometimes, people, you really should judge a book by it's cover). However, if you're looking for a laugh and to maybe feel a tiny bit better about being an awkward freak trying so hard to pretend to be a respectable adult, this may just be the perfect thing to unwind to after a hard day at the cubicle.

WHAT I'M READING NOW

The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

For no other reason than Neil Gaiman said to. And I am oh so in love with Neil Gaiman.

NEXT UP IN THE QUEUE

the rest of the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe (Shadow of the Torturer is the 1st of 4 parts)
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
Fables vol 1
Fables vol 2

Bring Out Your Dead

2011-07-23T14:22:00.004-04:00

The fall after I thought I had graduated from college- after I had walked in the ceremony but before I found out that I still needed three more credits- I got a job at Borders, just for a few months around the holidays, just too earn a little money and get off my mother’s couch while I was figuring out what I was really going to do with my life. I was a bookseller for a year, then a supervisor, then an assistant manager. My “three months until I find something better” turned into three years. I worked for Borders in two different states and if it hadn’t been for a manager who dicked me over when I moved back to NY I would probably still be there now, at the end of days.

I honestly can’t remember when the first Borders opened near me, or, really, a time before Borders. I went straight from Scholastic book orders to spending hours among the rows and rows of books, getting lost in the possibilities, desperately trying to figure out how to convince my mom to let me take it all home. Or maybe one more, just one more book, I need this book!

As an English major, Borders seemed like the logical place to work. I mean, if I was going to go back to retail it might as well be selling things I know a little bit about. And I really did love the store. So, I accepted a job that I was overqualified for, for less money than I could have gotten, because I got to be around books all day, and really, this was only going to last for a few months…

If I had had any kind of dignity or self respect or esteem at all I probably could have found a “grown up” job that paid a livable wage and said goodbye to Borders and retail in the three months I had allotted myself. If I had done that maybe I would be more financially secure right now, more stable, climbing the ladder not worrying who’s looking up my skirt. But then I just wouldn’t be me.

More than high school, more than college even, working at Borders made me who I am today. For whatever that may be worth to society. My coworkers were musicians and actors, aspiring directors, writers, artists, bibliophiles, and students. It was a while before I was able to shrug off enough of my insecurities to start making friends.

They all seemed so much cooler and smarter than me. They weren’t exactly the popular kids from high school, they were the smart alecks who sat in the back of the class and fell asleep because they were out last night at some bar you could never get into, listening to a band you’d never heard of. Because of these misfit toys I finally committed to being a vegetarian while on my lunch break (at a McDonald’s), I discovered all those bands I had never heard of before, and my life changed forever when a co-worker told me that I HAD to watch Battlestar Galactica. I had gone into Borders with a rough sketch of who I was and they helped me shade in the colors.

Now, it wasn’t all roses and sunshine. In fact, it mostly wasn’t roses and sunshine. It was retail and retail means customers who will demoralize you and then make you clean up after them, it means managers who sit in their office all day doing god knows what, while you try to manipulate yourself out of her line of sight whenever she does grace the sales floor with her presence because the only leadership tool she has is fear, and it means shitty, shitty pay.

It’s been a couple of years since I left Borders though, and now I look back on my time with the company much the same way so many people remember high school. All those things that had me cursing and complaining, threatening to walk out in the middle of a shift, and getting drunk with co-workers on a Tuesday night have faded into this warm hazy glow and I’m left with only the rose colored memories. Even the terrifying night I spent alone in the parking lot with Harry Potter fans who were not yet allowed in to buy Deathly Hollows feels like part of the good ole days.

I miss talking teenagers out of buying new Gossip Girl and instead sending them off with Looking for Alaska.

I miss the advance copies of books that publishers sent to the store and I, almost exclusively, absconded with.

I miss the discount, even though Amazon is still probably cheaper (My first few months at Borders I worked myself into a decent debt before I was able to reign myself in- millions of books and I get a discount, how could this possible go wrong?).

I miss walking the aisles finding new things to love.

I miss shoving The History of Love into customers’ hands and telling them that they would love it.

I miss talking to nerdy compatriot customers about Sandman and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I miss discussions about the validity of having an African American lit section when really shouldn’t it just be with the rest of literature?

I miss all the crazy stupid things we did to keep each other sane, like cart races or reading erotica over the walkees.

Every so often in this awkward quest I'm on to be "a grown up" I fantasize about ditching the cubicle and running back to Borders, back to the books and the misfit toys. Guess I need a new escape route.

Even if I do figure it out, if I find my way into the life I really want, one of peace and security and success on my terms, there’s probably always going to be part of me that misses working at Borders.

We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful

2011-07-02T15:17:00.004-04:00

My boyfriend is sleeping. At least, I hope he is. I’m lying in bed next to him with the light on so I could read. I finished the book I was reading and thought about turning off the light and trying to sleep, to be a better girlfriend (the light usually keeps him up), but I just don’t feel like closing my eyes. So, I’m telling myself he’s already asleep.

I’m dating a 23 year old and that means that sometimes I get to feel like (pretend) I’m 23 again- which is a feeling somewhere between empowering and heartbreaking. I’m 30 but I wish I could be 23 so that living in my parent’s basement without ever having come close to realizing any of my childhood dreams wouldn’t be such a big deal. “I’m only 23,” I could say. “There’s still so much life stretched out before me just waiting to be lived!” 23. Everything is just starting and all these mistakes you’re making everyday? They’re learning experiences, character builders, amusing anecdotes to tell your friends when you’re 30 and successful.

Successful is a relative term. I have a pretty decent job that gives me health insurance. I have a rocking credit score and I actually seem to be maintaining a serious romantic relationship. So, yay me. Still, I’m looking down at the copy of my friend’s book in my hands wondering where it all went wrong. Okay, well, not so much wondering where I went wrong as wishing that I hadn’t.

Some awkward children grow up to be fierce, interesting people who get tattoos and cultivate a sense of self so strong that whatever they do think, drink, say or wear is by default cooler than anything you could ever pull off. The other awkward children grow up to be awkward adults masquerading as respectable citizens the best they can all the while plagued by the knowledge that somewhere along the line they slept through some seminal coming of age moment that would have transformed their awkward into awesome. Instead they go about their adult lives slouching in their cubicles, scrolling through facebook, and filling the rest of their hours with TV shows and other people’s stories. I am one of the latter awkwards; Cassie J Sneider belongs to the former.

Cassie and I worked together for a while at one of those large chain bookstores that used to be a pretty fantastic place to work with other interesting weirdos you could have intelligent conversations with and then race through the store on tiny precariously balanced book carts. Then people began to realize that they could get their Nora Roberts fix half price at Costco or Amazon and slowly the place went to shit. Most of us went our separate ways. I jumped ship to fold sweaters at dressbarn and then sell insurance at a call center. Cassie continued to live her life in her awkward adventurous way, compiling her tales in her new book Fine Fine Music which is available on Amazon.

When I picked up my copy, from the bookstore we used to work at, my first impulse was to tear it in two, though I probably would have done more damage to my hands than to the book if I had attempted it. Still, I was pissed. She had done it. She wrote a book. Someone published it and there were real life people out there buying it. My next impulse was to stomp my feet and howl. I didn’t do either. Instead, I sulked. Sulking, while still unattractive is slightly less repellent than a temper tantrum. Cassie had published a book and was driving around the country giving readings at hip independent bookstores where adoring oddballs and intellectuals were lining up for autographs and I… I have this blog that I sometimes write in even though I only have 3 friends who actually read the thing. Jealousy is a nine year old sticking her tongue out at you.

It was probably a week before I was able to open the book past the message she left with her signature on the title page. I read a story and put it down again, disgusted. Not because it was bad but because it was good. It is easier to deal with other people’s successes if you can tell yourself it’s not really a success. If her stories had been vapid or banal or the writing had been crap I could have written her success off as more evidence that the publishing world is catering to mindless drones with a 5^th grade reading level *cough*twilight*cough* and I could have padded my ego with some righteous indignation. Unfortunately for my ego, I’m going to have to find something else to be indignant about.

Cassie is a talented writer with an interesting view of the world, a strong voice, and she has done a thing or two worth writing about. Have I mentioned that pisses me off? Writing this now I’m thinking about lighting the pages on fire just to watch them burn. But then I’d have to go on Amazon and get another copy and that one wouldn’t be signed. Also infuriating? Knowing that I can type her name in an amazon search and receive a result that is actually her.

I was published once (and I’m talking real world here, not junior high lit mags. The fact that those were flooded with our poetry doesn’t count). An extremely short story I wrote made its way into an online lit mag for flash fiction. It’s not much of a portfolio. Cassie has taken the dream and fueled it with diner coffee, karaoke highs and cross country road trips. I took the dream and shoved it under my pillow somehow hoping to achieve it through osmosis. It doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe it’s because I forgot to add water. Or maybe it’s because I stopped living in stories.

Instead of writing for hours I watch TV or sleep in. I phone it all in waiting for something to happen, waiting for a story to happen to me instead of creating one. Nothing much happens when you’re stuck in a cubicle. And I’m the one who put myself there. I don’t just mean work either.

I stayed awkward. But maybe it’s not too late for me. Thirty is supposed to be the new 20, right? I can still conquer the world! ……Well, at least I’m not dead. I have a couple of good years left in me and if I ever get my ass off this couch I might be able to make something of myself. Something that looks more like who I thought I was going to be. Pull that dream out from under my pillow and make it fucking happen.

In the mean time, read Cassie’s book, it’s really good.

2011-06-05T12:11:00.000-04:00

Come Alive by Jonathan Mead

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.

Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?

(Author: Jonathan Mead)

If I had one week left to live I doubt that I'd be doing anything that I'm doing now. I'd spin a globe, put my finger on some place i'd never been and just go. I'd spend my days exploring beautiful things, my evenings making love, and each night I'd write about everything till my fingers cramped up around my pen. It sounds like a perfect way to die- but a difficult way to live.

My job does not make me "come alive". But it doesn't make me entirely miserable either and it's a pretty decent way to pay the bills. If I had my druthers I would be making a living off my writing. The thing about that dream though is that the publishing world is kind of a crap shoot. I could write the most brilliant, beautiful piece of fiction the world has ever known and struggle my entire life only to die in obscurity- or I could write something completely mediocre and live out the rest of my days in a mansion. I'm not saying genius is never rewarded in literature I'm just saying that you can't count on it. What I'm saying is there's really no way to know for sure that what you write is going to sell. So, as much as I'd love to quit my job and do ONLY what makes me "come alive" I haven't earned that life and truth is I probably never will.

That sounds depressing, and it kind of is. My dream for as long as I can remember has been to write, just write, without having to worry about doing anything else to keep the bank from repossessing my car or kicking me out of my home. That dream is still a possibility. People do it. It could happen. But I have to gird myself for the possibility that I may never get there and readjust the way I look at myself. Because never getting there doesn't neccessarily mean that I am a failure. Being able to pay the bills is not what makes you a successful writer. Writing makes you a successful writer.

That's everyone's dream though, isn't it? To get paid, and paid well, to do the one thing that you love the most. But what I think is my dream may actually be killing my true dream. Money is not at the heart of my dream, it just surrounds it because we need money to live. If money didn't matter how many of your dreams would change? But we do need money. We need it to put shelter around us, clothes on us, food in us. We need money to buy our car, put gas in it, pay the tolls on the interstate and to do whatever it is we want to do when we get where we're going. I don't write because I need money but I need money in order to write. And that's where the American Dream is killing the real dream.

Did you ever wonder what Dickens would have written if they hadn't been paying him by the word?

As much as my dream is to live a life where my only professional focus is writing, if I spend all my time trying to write what I think will pay the bills what I thought was a dream could turn into a nightmare. The money is secondary, the work is what matters. Writing stories that matter is what makes me come alive. The need to earn money harshes that quite a bit but it's not going away.

the question is, which need am I going to let lead me? I can let money be my guide, put aside writing all together or focus my writing on subjects and characters that have the best chance at being profitable. OR I can accept the fact that in order to fully embrace my dream of writing what matters I have to let go of this idea of profit, of using my words like one of those toddler beauty queens. My real dream, what truly makes me come alive, is writing what matters, putting stories out there that effect people, help people, change the way they see themselves and the world. Am I really willing to sacrifice that for a cushier life?

So, maybe I can't quit my job and run off to Tahiti or disappear somewhere in the Scottish Highlands but I can stop waiting for the world to hand me the life that I want. I can stop defining my successes and failures by how much money I have in the bank. I can go to work and do my job and bring home the paycheck I need for food and rent and car payments and I can stop making myself miserable for not having written a New York Times Bestselling-soon to be major motion picture-retire off the royalties book. If I write one person's favorite book I'll be living my dreams. Even if I'm living in debt.

2011-06-01T23:35:00.000-04:00

Today by Liz Danzico

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.

Spent another day walking in someone else's shoes, I've almost gotten used to the blisters.

2011-05-31T12:51:00.003-04:00

Gwen Bell – 15 Minutes to Live

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.

1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.

There was a girl who, since she was very young, lived on mountains. She climbed their heights and she dove down through their caves and she lived off what they provided for her. The mountains always had more to give than she could take. The mountains were always growing and so was she.

The little girl grew strong and brave and taller and taller until she was not quite so little anymore. Still, the mountains were taller. The mountains were her magic. She thought they would never end. She thought she could go to the end of the world and always be jumping from mountaintop to mountaintop.

And so the girl set out to wander the world, to see all the mountains. She saw very many mountains, all of them beautiful, all of them fierce and strong, like her. She climbed to their tops and slipped down through their caves and laughed at the loveliness of it all. She laughed and heard its echoes dance around her for miles. She sang as she leapt between the mountaintops, singing an endless song until the mountains ended.

The girl balanced on top of the last mountain, one foot on the cold steely tip, one foot stretching out in front of her, into air, twirling about in a cloud as the girl understood that there was nothing there. This was it. There were no more mountains, no more heights, no more caves.

The rest of the world was laid out before her, little hills no more than goose bumps, valleys that spread out like a heart ache, rivers and lakes and roads and trees and somewhere down there, she knew, people.

The world was more than mountains. There were so many things that she could not yet name, things that would hurt and steal, things the mountains had never whispered of. For the first time in her young life the girl felt weak and small and afraid. The leg she was standing on began to shake beneath her. She needed to make a choice; the mountains or everything else. She breathed deep the chill mountain air and put her foot down. Then she took a step.

BOO-YAH!

2010-01-30T18:17:00.002-05:00

My story "No, Turn on Red" is up in the current installment of Dogzplot Flash Fiction. It is very exciting for me to see my words on a site that isn't my blog!

Check it out here!

On Crushes and Crushing

2009-07-07T19:24:00.000-04:00

I realized recently that getting over a crush is strikingly similar to the Kubler-Ross model from “On Death and Dying”. The traditional 5 stages are:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Getting over a crush goes something like this:

Denial: “He’s only ignoring me because he likes me!”

Self Loathing: “If only I were prettier, smarter, funnier, skinnier, etc… he would like me.” Often followed by a vicious cycle of ice cream and elliptical machines.

Anger: “What the hell is his problem?! I’m cute and smart and funny and I actually like him! That’s not enough for him?!” This stage usually includes beer and cursing.

Sad Acceptance: You’ve given up hope that he’s ever going to show up on your front lawn with a boom-box held over his head. You’re mostly okay with this but every so often you think about that time when you were so sure he was flirting with you…and that smile… There is usually more ice cream. Or cookies. Cookies are good.

Peaceful Acceptance: This is where you get all zen talking about how it was never meant to be and how you can see now that he was all wrong for you and it never would have worked out and you wish him well and you hope he finds love and the universe will provide and you go from downward facing dog into child’s pose.

Ooooh Shiny! aka Hey… who’s that guy?: Eventually a new guy walks into the bar and the cycle starts from the beginning. This is a floater stage because shiny can happen at anytime rendering the rest of the steps unnecessary.

In conclusion: Liking someone who doesn’t like you back epically sucks. But you get over it. And something shiny is always just around the corner.

I thought you had been planting flowers

2009-06-21T15:10:00.003-04:00

New poem. I started this on the plane and finished it in California.

I thought you had been planting flowers

while you were sleeping
I buried you in the grave
I watched you dig for me
(I thought you had been planting flowers).
I shoveled dirt on top of you
in large, angry loads
eager to cover you completely
before you began to inhale the black earth
and the worms came
to eat you like words.

after,
in the silence of years that
stretched around me like
someone else’s house
I liked to imagine that
it had all been buried with you, that
what we had done was biodegradable,
broken down beyond molecules
because even molecules can be mistakes.

but sleeping is not dead
and buried is not gone
and even now after all
the time it took you to
pull yourself through
the dirt into the air,
even after I have
burned over the bruises
and watched myself heal
into something shiny
and strong, and beautiful,
the molecules of my mistakes
remain.

Regrets, I've had a few...

2009-06-19T00:19:00.001-04:00

Sometimes making a mistake is the right thing to do. We don’t usually see that though. In the aftermath of what went wrong we get caught up in imagining how it could have been, how it SHOULD have been. “Should” is probably my single least favorite word in the English language. “Should” usually causes more pain and destruction than the mistake ever could, or ever will. “Should” is short sighted and tends to stunt growth. Should keeps you standing still, and where you’re standing isn’t anywhere real. Should. Should have. Shouldn’t have. They’re not just words, they’re a force, like an evil gravity that keeps you orbiting every bad decision you ever made. With should as your guide you can look back and see all the warning signs you were oblivious to on your decent, all the emergency exits you missed. I shouldn’t have gotten in that car. I should have gone to college. I shouldn’t have kissed that guy. I should have just kept my mouth shut…

I like to think of parallel universes. It’s comforting to think that somewhere, in some universe, there is a Michelle who has made all the right moves. But, for the first time, I’m glad that I’m not her. I make mistakes on a daily basis. I’m never happy about them. I never feel good about the fact that I’ve hurt someone or broken something or let myself be maneuvered into a difficult situation. But, at the same time, I love my mistakes. Because mistakes are always more than just mistakes. If you listen to what they’re trying to tell you sometimes they help you grow and sometimes they show you how you’ve already grown more than you realize.

Center Field

2009-06-01T12:01:00.000-04:00

I was at a party last night talking to a friend I hadn’t seen in quite a while and she asked me who I was dating. When I told her, no, I wasn’t seeing anyone, she went into the typical “I’m surprised, you’re such a catch” spiel that you’d expect from a friend. And she’s right, I am, but that’s beside the point. The point isn’t how worthy of being caught I am, the point is why I haven’t been. It’s not because I’m hideous, or anything; it’s because I’m a freak. Or, rather, because when it comes to the gushy love stuff I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old boy.

I’ve used this metaphor before but it is still sadly accurate: When it comes to love I’m the kid out in center field looking up at the pop fly wanting to catch it and praying it doesn’t come anywhere near.

This manifests itself in many awesome ways in the real world. My favorite is the fact that when I like a guy I find it SO necessary to hide that fact that I will often treat him with what appears to be complete disregard. What’s really fun is this is completely involuntary. And there’s usually a neurotic little “what the fuck are you doing?! Talk to him!” dialogue going on in my head while I’m acting like he does not exist. This frustrates me to no end. See, if a guy’s not into me, I can deal with that. But if a guy is into me and nothing happens because I’M A FREAKIN TOOL and made him think I’m uninterested, well, that kind of keeps me up at night.

I can’t be the only one who does this. I know this because the internet exists and the internet was obviously created by people who share my pre-pubescent courting style.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my convalescence and it seems to me like evolution fucked up a little bit. Everywhere else in the animal kingdom courtship is about putting your best face forward and screaming “PICK ME! PICK ME!” Even plants have it down. Flowers bloom as prettily as possible and thrust their petals into the air in a manner that says to the bees “you know you want it.” This is what we all should be doing. When you like someone you should be the most yourself and say “this is what I got. If you want it, bring it.”

So why is it that the moments when I should be the most confident and aware of my innate awesomeness are the moments when suddenly I can’t think of a single redeeming factor about myself? This is not productive to the whole continuation of the species thing. Instead of the “that’s right, you fight for me, I’m damn fine” mentality the females of every other species have got working for them, so many of us go into the “run away! run away!” mode that culminates in Jane Austen movie marathons and excessive blogging. And dying alone in a houseful of cats.

I don’t know about you, but creepy cat lady is not exactly my Plan A. So, from here on out, on my honor, I will try to serve God, and my country, by not being so much of a tool. Because what good is the human race if my DNA dies with me? I have a responsibility to keep the awesomeness going into the next generation. And, also, it would be nice if the next boy who kissed me wasn’t gay.

New Poems

2009-05-29T18:00:00.003-04:00

or, rather, new-ish poems. wrote them about a month ago

Child’s Pose

as her family slept
the child crept, heel to toe
down steps and through doors
to the little yellow tree
in the backyard that blocks
the chained and broken gate.
the lesser light hung heavy
in the hearkening sky,
shining borrowed light on
the brown bottoms of her bare feet
as she knelt, head resting
on midnight green grass
damp with the remnants
of April’s last shower.
She remembered that morning
when, under her stroking hand,
the animal closed its eyes
and the body released
shit and soul on her sundress.
watching little yellow flowers
fall like stars or skin
she weeps, wishing
she did not understand
the science that they taught her.
under the little yellow tree,
dirt she had held in her hands,
black like worms
under her finger nails
as she let the grains
slide over open palms,
slipping through fingers
and falling to blanket
legs and furry face,
wondering
which life was this?

**********************************

Communion

This is my body
as it was in the garden
as it was when
I was a child in the bath
before you cast us out
and the world came in
and I had to stretch my skin
to make the sadness fit.
This is my body
as you remember it,
as your hands remember
the places they created
the hollows between my bones
the branching tubes that
bind and feed and bleed
the colors of my eyes
that change shape in the sun

This is my body
after sucking at the knowledge
that fell like fruit
too ripe to be held.
the words you wanted me to steal
slipping from the corners of my mouth
staining my skin
and everything I see.
This is my body
fault lines and flaws
breaking under your breath,
swaying chords that sing
like suspension bridges,
hairs and scars and the marks
where I have burned,
finger nails and smiling lips
the green leaves of my shame.

This is my body
dirt and blood,
blood and water and bread.

This is my body
I give it up for you.

you were at the party where i hired the singing gorilla!

2009-05-24T14:40:00.001-04:00

Driving home at five o’clock in the morning, my clothes in a plastic bag on the passenger’s seat, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I could spend my entire life on this “slender, riotous island”.

Who knows how long this feeling will last, how long until the wanderlust starts churning in my veins and I have to dig my fingers into the soil to tear up the roots that started spreading out last night. Next year? Next month? Tomorrow? But right now it feels like summer, real summer, not just the heat and the lengthening of days, but the way summer used to mean something when we were kids; freedom, possibility, the way everything just seemed to happen like ice cream and music. No one ever wants to leave summer.

A little over a week ago I turned 28, which isn’t all that old geologically speaking, but feels pretty damn ancient when you haven’t accomplished anything with your life. Or, rather, I haven’t accomplished anything that society would consider to be a pat on the back worthy success.

It’s not laudable to have written a book unless you’ve been published and lots of clever people say you’re worth reading, or, many, many more moderately intelligent to “how the fuck do they dress themselves” stupid people pay to read what you have written. For a long time I’ve been caught up in trying to make myself into society’s version of a successful writer. In the back of my head, at every job, every day, it’s always been ‘this is just until I can live off my writing’. Because that’s the goal, right?
But lately I’ve been thinking that I’ve been going about this wrong- big surprise, me going about something the wrong way. How can I expect to write anyone’s favorite book (which is the real dream) if all the time I’m writing I’m hoping that these are the words that will save me from this mediocre life I’ve made for myself? That’s kind of a lot of pressure to put on a paragraph. I need to find a job that doesn’t make me want to do harm to myself and others, a job that can be a career, that I can be in for the long haul. Because I don’t need to write the next Harry Potter or Da Vinci Code, or, god help me, fill in the blank Nora Roberts novel (that woman has earned so much money for writing so much crap), I just need to write what’s inside me and if I’m very, very lucky someone somewhere in someplace in time will love something I’ve created the way I have loved so many books. If you’re expecting your words to save you from financial ruin they can’t save you in the ways that they’re supposed to.

I think all my life I’ve been waiting to be rescued. But I don’t live in a tower, or a dragon guarded castle, there are no wicked stepsisters in sight and I have yet to eat a poisoned apple. I don’t need to be rescued so it is really about time that I stopped wanting to be. I’m 28, for god’s sake; all the princes are looking for Taylor Swift.

And I’m cool with that. I’m not really the prince type. I like them a bit dorkier, with a bit more geek and a whole heap of nerd. Which is beside the point, because this isn’t about my Eliot poem of a love life.

This is about slowly figuring things out, even if you never really figure things out. About realizing that even when you don’t really know who you are, you still know how to be yourself. And about one perfect night that was perfect not because of any post-card perfection, Hollywood montage of moments filled with beautiful people making all the right moves, but was perfect because of the disappointments and defeats, annoyances and awkwardness. Because the things that make nights memorable hardly ever have to do with what you wanted at the time but when, sometime around 4 A.M., you realize that what you got is so much better. And because jumping into a pool with your clothes on is always the right decision.

Can anyone direct me to Waponi Woo?

2009-05-01T20:41:00.002-04:00

I am happy and miserable. Not the usual ADDesque hop-scotching of emotional squares but it’s as if my feelings are singing two notes at the same time and the harmony is both comforting and exhausting.

In one of the choirs at one of the colleges I attended while taking the scenic route through higher education the choir director asked me if I could sing two notes at once. He was only partially kidding. Our tenor section was full of pansies, I have a pretty good range, and my singing two notes at once would have been much easier for him than trying to figure out which parts of which songs I would sing with the altos and which with the tenors. I sing much better in choirs than I do by myself. Maybe it’s the being part of something that brings that confidence out in me, maybe it’s something about wanting to be seen while hiding. Maybe it’s because my tongue longs to sing words it doesn’t understand.

That same choir director also gave me the alto part in the Regina Coeli quartet. I was shocked that I was able to gather the balls to audition; I was incredulous when I actually got it. I wasn’t the only one. A girl whom I was friendly with, who was also an alto, congratulated me with: “so, you’re singing the whole thing?” Her voice tinged with hope and confusion. I should have replied with: “That’s right, bitch. The. Whole. Thing. He picked me, NOT YOU. Deal with it,” then strutted away as murmured choruses of “Oh, no, she didn’t” erupted around me. But what I actually did was blush, shrug awkwardly, and say “uh…um…I guess?” before walking away thinking I’m singing the whole thing, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, and trying to stave off an anxiety attack.

I haven’t been in a choir since I graduated. And although I sing loud and proud in the shower and my car, I haven’t even so much as stepped up to a karaoke machine in probably over a year. This is a symptom of a larger problem, quite possibly a brain cloud. The good news is I am acutely aware of the problem (i.e. how completely uninhabitable my life is), the bad news is I may be sacrificed to an Orange Crush God before I figure things out.

Every day, good days, bad days, I feel more and more just how desperately I need to get out of retail. I think part of the reason I hate H.B. so much is because I know that if I don’t get off this train I’m going to become her. *shudder* Problem is I got an English degree then threw myself into 4 years of retail slavery. I have absolutely no idea what else I can do. Oh, marketable skills, how I pine for you. As much as I hate retail management I’m good at it (god, that makes me sad) and it comes with health insurance. The prospect of finding something new is daunting, but the idea of staying is devastating.

What I need is for the universe to tell me just what it is that it wants from me, cause if I knew I would totally get on that.

Or a Sugar Daddy.

Either works for me.

smoke gets in your eyes

2009-04-25T23:54:00.001-04:00

I’m not usually a smoke alone kind of girl but my cat is dying and I have off tomorrow so, I thought, why the hell not? I couldn’t find a lighter so I sat on my back steps lighting match after match from a white book with glossy names and a glossy heart on the cover; Stephen <3 Sara. I don’t know who Stephen and Sara are, when they got married or if I was there, but hteir choice of wedding favor was an essential element in my tea party for one, so, I thank them. I do have a cousin named Stephen. I think he’s married. I’m willing to bet his wife’s name is Sara.

I don’t understand why people are so down on marijuana. Where did that come from? There’s got to be some kind of history. Why is alcohol perfectly acceptable but weed is the devil? How many weed related deaths are there a year? How many angry, violent potheads do you know? How many people OD on grass? Is that even possible?

This is my new life plan:
Write brilliant novel.
Learn Dutch.
Move to Amsterdam.
Ride bikes.
Smoke pot.
Be happy.

Everyone needs a life plan, unless your plan is to not have a plan and to just float around and see where the ebbs and tides take you, but really that’s a type of plan too. I think my life plan is pretty perfect. Contribute to the world, avoid doing harm, be happy with who and where you are. What else is out there to want? If I can do and have that then the love I want will come to me or I will find that it’s not something that I need after all. Either way, I’ll be okay. Either way, I’ll be happy.

Morrissey, the peanut butter sandwich, or venting

2009-04-25T01:01:00.000-04:00

I hate hating people. It doesn’t feel good. It’s not fun. I
just want to like everyone, hold hands and sing friendship songs. But some
people make it really fucking difficult for me not to want to punch them in the
face. H.B. –a woman who gives herself credit for other people’s sales all the
fucking time (she’s done this to me on huge sales more than once)- had the gall
to accuse me of shorting J on sales and taking them for myself. If she had read
the numbers correctly she would have seen just how far from the truth that was.

This woman just makes me want to scream. Not, even like,
scream at her and tell her off but just a general filling my lungs, opening my
mouth and releasing sound, ANY sound. Just so all these hateful vibrations can
leave my body because they really can’t be good for me. If she falsely accuses
me of one more thing I swear my appendix is going to burst.

I try to like her. I try to empathize with her. I try to
understand her. I try to avoid eye contact and allow her to be the Alpha just
to get through the day. I try. And sometimes I succeed. Sometimes she’s even,
dare I say it, nice. But it never fucking lasts. For every one civil gesture
there are ten experiences like this.

Deep breath in… and out… This is not my life. This is not my
life. This is not my life. This is not my life.

Can I move to California now, please?

I listened to Years of Refusal on my break to help calm
down. I don’t know if it was Morrissey, the peanut butter sandwich, or the
venting but I felt better. I'm not sure how I feel about this album though. The
critics are raving. But, I don’t know, I feel like the last three albums have
been too similar. It’s not like I don’t like it, I just like it when there’s a
real difference between albums. I feel like a heretic saying anything vaguely
critical about Morrissey- at least, about his music. The man himself is another
story. I love him, but he’s a tool sometimes. “The smell of roasting flesh is
just too much for me to bear.” Oh, you poor delicate flower. Ok, I get it, the
idea of eating a hamburger makes me want to vomit, but you’re on stage, man,
performing for a crowd that I’m sure was chock full o’ vegetarians. Suck it up.
No one’s asking you to eat it (Yes, that is how I talk to people I love).

Know what else I love? Fruit. Fruit makes me happy. Everyone
should eat more fruit. It’s yummy and makes you feel happy and gosh darnit it’s
good for you. We’ll all eat fruit
and hold hands and frolic through the flowers singing friendship songs. Either
that or I’m going to have to start doing incredibly hard drugs.

even the fish are drowning

2009-04-23T00:59:00.001-04:00

Conversation Overheard Today

God: Rains?

Noah: Check.

God: Like serious, end of the world, we’re all gonna die,
even the fish are drowning, flood-type rains?

Noah: Check.

God: Heathens abandoned to face the consequences of their
sinful ways in the swirling waters of doom?

Noah: Check.

God: Animals gathered up two-by-two and lead onto the arc to
be saved with the righteous?

Noah: Uh… arc?

little you and i

2009-04-21T21:09:00.001-04:00

long time, no blog.

I’ve been working on a blog about my cat for, like, a month. But I don’t think I’m ever going to finish it. I write one sentence and then I hit save because I’m just too damn sad to write any more. My cat is old. The phrase “decisions will have to be made” has been used more than once and I don’t like it. She’s deaf and now we think she’s going blind. She cries a lot. The thing about cats is that they’re not like grandparents. When they get to be 80something in cat years you don’t feel consoled that they’ve lived a long full life. Because even though your cat may be 80 in cat years to you she’s only 16 and it is not okay to die when you’re sixteen.

So, yeah, I’ve decided to blog about other things because if I keep trying to blog about my cat I’m never going to write again.
Thursday was a really good day. Took an early train into the city. Had Chipotle with Sadie and my name twin. Oh, how I love Chipotle. Michelle went back to work and Sadie and I walked to stogo. And as we sat on the bench in front of stogo eating some AMAZING organic vegan ice cream and judging passersby on a beautiful spring day I couldn’t help but wonder how I could ever even contemplate going so far from this city I love so damn much. Then we went to the tiny studio apartment with an alley view that Sadie’s friend pays almost $2k a month for and I remembered why exactly it is I am getting the hell out of dodge. It was a bittersweet day because even though I’ll be going into the city plenty more times before the big move this was the first time that it felt like I was starting to say goodbye.
*sigh*
My cat keeps walking around, crying and then lying down.
I’m too sad to blog.

Drunken Lullabies

2009-03-23T00:00:00.001-04:00

This blog is late and comes in parts
*also, i'm too sleepy to spellcheck or seek out any grammatical or other errors, so, fingers crossed and all

1. The GRE
I can’t believe I paid $140 to sit in a cubicle feeling inferior for three hours. The good news is my test scores didn’t make me cry. The bad news, I don’t know, is there bad news? It was fine, actually. Which surprised me. I kinda imagined myself either skipping out of the test center singing songs of glee, or being carted away after collapsing into an inconsolable heap of misery and regret. I actually wound up getting almost exactly (it might actually be exactly) the same score on the GRE as I did on the SAT, which is tragically comedic.

2. Roadtrips
They’re awesome.

3. Irony
We managed to find a spot around the block from the hotel to park while we checked in and dropped our bags in the swanky-swank room Jax swindled for us with her insane amount of points. I stepped out of the car and read the marquee for the theatre across the street: “Morrissey 3/14” Yeah, Morrissey had a show AROUND THE BLOCK FROM MY HOTEL on the same night that I was in town to see Flogging Molly. Mmm hmm, that’s my life.

4. Death by Music
Would it really have been an Irish festival if everything had gone smoothly?

We didn’t bring coats because we knew we’d be rocking out later. So, of course, it rained. It wasn’t a downpour but a consistent, permeating drizzle that didn’t let up for the entire time we were there. The free beer helped. The music helped more. It’s a handy thing to have a cousin with good taste in music. I now heart the Aggrolites and heart Flogging Molly more than I did before. I need to gear up and psychologically prepare before the next FM show though. We were up front, part of the unstoppable ocean of awesomeness and bruising they call their fans, and I was holding my own (by which I mean, holding onto whatever or whomever I could hold on to so as not to fall down and be trampled to death) and wanting to be there, for about a song and a half when suddenly I flashed on a time in the not so near future when I was no longer holding my own and not so much wanting to be there as I was bleeding and broken and crying for me mum. Also, I almost lost my glasses when a crowd surfer made contact with my face. Which is not cool. I really like my glasses.

5. Pan
Flogging Molly fled the stage too quickly and we were left, cold, wet, tired, stumbling through the festival grounds back to the metro. A sea of green (and me in my little red writing hoodie) sleepily slid onto the orange towards Vienna and Jackie played her penny whistle as we headed back to the hotel. This is something I could never do. All too often I care far too much about what people are going to think. My cousin has balls. She dives into mosh pits and chats up boys and plays her penny whistle on crowded subways. A lot of times I wish I was more like her.

6. Jersey
has cheap gas. Everything else blows.

7. St. Paddy’s Day
Back to Long Island, back to work. I thought that perhaps, St. P’s Day being a Tuesday and all, I could let this one slide after our weekend of debauchery but my DNA threatened to unhelix itself (it’s a very ugly and painful process, there are pictures on webmd but I wouldn’t recommend looking it up. you’ll be scarred for life) if I didn’t go to a bar and have a Guinness. Plus, it gave me an excuse to txt a boy. Jax and I went to chilis for dinner while trying to figure out where to go. Two twofers later and we still had no idea. We wound up driving around aimlessly listening to Jason Mraz (because aimlessness is what happens when you leave decision making up to me) before eventually making our way to a supposed pub. Here’s a little tip for you; if you walk into a bar and you are the only people not carded, turn around, this ain’t your scene. We had two beers and got the hell out of dodge. Dodge, in this case, being a bar that serves beer in red solo cups to yuppie 22 year olds. This may sound like a bust, but, well, what’s more Irish than drinking beer and going home disappointed?

Long Way From Home

2009-03-04T00:54:00.002-05:00

Sometimes when I’m feeling costive I look to the artistic expressions of others and try to turn them into words. This is what I wrote today:

Long Way From Home

Made for the snow
I did not know
what it meant to burn
until the turn
that brought me here.
Blue water that beats
into brown-gold earth,
green on the ground and
lashing the sky.
So many colors and
none of them mine.

But the sun will teach
my skin to sweat and squeeze
into the color and
shape of this place,
to steal
a cluttered purpose
from dirtsweet flowers
that will fill the empty
sound that used to sing
of endless white and
open, unbroken sky.

Closing my eyes in
the shade of breezy palms
I sleep and
dream of things I understand;
the freeze that made sense
of who I am,
the desert that was
an ocean I could stand on.

my inspriation

it is hard to be a gangsta with a basket on your bike

2009-03-02T18:25:00.002-05:00

Sara and Jason live OBNOXIOUSLY far away from me and I really think that they should have taken that into consideration before signing their lease. Humph. Still, I went out into the cold and sucked up the 40 minute drive so I could watch Battlestar Galactica with people who actually get what the frak I’m talking about. Only 3 episodes left and while I appreciate that they are staying true to the integrity of the story and not stretching it out because the cast and crew have a steady gig they want to milk for all it’s worth (though, couldn’t blame them if they did, if I had that gig they would have to forcibly remove me from the lot), I’m just not ready to say goodbye. Somebody is probably going to have to hold me when it’s over. Shhh…shhh…it’s okay… you’ll love again…

I made chocomole, finally, because I love chocolate and avocados and making a mess in the kitchen. The first “attempt” was a farce as the avocados I had bought on Monday had rotted by Wednesday. Epic fail, avocados, epic fail. But Friday came with 3 new avocados and as the dates were already mashed I wasted no time throwing ingredients into the Kitchen Aid. Which brings me to today’s lesson, if you’re going to throw avocado halves into a food processor you should make sure the bowl is big enough to prevent the halves from flying out at you. All in all though, it was a pretty successful endeavor. I think, perhaps, less dates next time. Jason Mraz must have HUGE avocados. I say this because the 20 dates he indicated were just too much for my little green friends, and, cuz it sounds kinda dirty. I still enjoyed it, which is a good thing because no one else in this house is going to touch that crazy-raw-vegan-shit in the fridge. Especially since it kinda looks like poo. Though, I did get my dad to eat vegan lasagna a little while back. He knew what it was and still ate it. I gave myself a gold star.

Over on Facebook there’s this 15 albums thing going around and I’m pretty well diggin it. I love finding out that friends like the same obscure band that I thought no one else knew about or how a girl I kinda knew in high school has awesome taste that almost parallels mine. I like the discussions it’s been starting. Also, it’s been making me want to do nothing but listen to music 24/7, which is going to cause some problems since I have to go to work tomorrow ☹ So, anyway, here’s mine:

Think of 15 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 40) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the wazoo, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 15 others, including moi. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

ok. so right now, these are the 15 but in ten minutes time i'm sure i'm going to think of another 5 and be pretty well pissed.

1. The Queen is Dead- The Smiths
2. The Boy with the Arab Strap- Belle and Sebastian
3. Electric Warrior- T. Rex
4. Bandwagonesque- Teenage Fanclub
5. Sunshine on Leith- The Proclaimers
6. Either/Or- Elliot Smith
7. Crosby Stills and Nash- CS&N
8. Treasure- Cocteau Twins
9. Ladies of the Canyon- Joni Mitchell
10. Hounds of Love- Kate Bush
11. IV- Led Zeppelin
12. Absolution- Muse
13. Pink Moon- Nick Drake
14. Slanted & Enchanted- Pavement
15. Monk's Blues- Thelonious Monk

Also,

SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!

I love snow. Love, love, love, love, love. I love walking in it. I love driving in it. I love looking out at it through the window. I love lying down in it and making snow angels. I love balling it in my fists and throwing it at my friends and family. I love tilting my head to the sky and letting it land on my tongue. I love the way it rests on tree branches and coats your hair. I love how it makes the world a little less loud and a little more beautiful. I love how by trapping us, it sets us free. I even love the brown sludge of the following days because it reminds me of the beauty that was. Love, love, love, love, love.

What Morrissey Doesn't Know... and other "Important Things"

2009-02-21T23:56:00.004-05:00

I had Live at Java Joe’s playing in my car when my mom and I were driving to lunch yesterday (Smitty digs the groovy tunes). She asked what we were listening to and I said, “Jason Mraz. He makes my heart smile.” To which she replied: “Does Morrissey know about this?”

Oh my god I could have peed my pants.

Of all the completely applicable things one could have said to me after my geeky gushiness she managed to come up with, off the fly, the single most perfect response. Does Morrissey know about this?

I heart my mom.

Well, sorry Morrissey, you reap what you sow. Perhaps if you hadn’t allowed your New York concerts to sell out while I was at work my heart would smile for you alone. But there’s a new kid in town and he’s younger so I bet he’s got more stamina. (oh, snap!)

I still haven’t gotten Years of Refusal yet *slaps wrist* Bad, Smiths fan! But I have been actively not spending money as I have huuuuuge… tracts of debt and I work retail. My mom and I went into the mall –a place I have always loathed- after lunch and just walking around made me feel bad about myself in ways the mall hasn’t made me feel since I was a chunky teenager glancing wistfully into the windows of Contempo Casuals (are they still around? I remember fearing and sort of revering that store when I was young. It was everything that I was not.). So, Moz, if you’re reading this, (which, let’s admit it, you are, I know you stalk my blog) let’s make a deal. You free up some tickets for me and I’ll buy your album. K?

Demetri Martin has shiny hair.

He also has a new show. I missed the first episode but actually remembered to DVR it this week. He amuses me. I’ve always enjoyed his stand-up (sigh. R.I.P. Invite Them Up) but I have to admit I get a bit distracted by his shiny, shiny hair. It’s so big and fluffy and just so damn shiny that I kinda wanna pet it. And by kinda wanna I mean Demetri better run if he sees me on the street.

Speaking of hair. When I was in the mall, feeling disgusted with myself, I went into Bath and Body Works, not because I like the store –which I generally don’t- but because we had this gift certificate that had 15 bucks on it and figured we should spend it. And as much as I have disliked B&BWs in the past I have to admit I’m a bit excited now. THEY CARY VEGAN HAIR STUFF! I know, right?! I’m not saying I’m all of a sudden a B&BWs fan, but it gives me hope for a brighter tomorrow. ☺

P.S. You should never, ever, EVER develop any kind of romanticy feelings for me. Whenever I like someone, or find out that they like me, I turn into a twelve year old. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and rather horrifying. And so I blog, and sleep alone.

Nostalgic Racism

2009-02-16T21:16:00.000-05:00

O.C. (who is no longer my mortal enemy, but I’ll blog about that later) came over to tell me that the customer that she was helping called her Buckwheat. Twice. I laughed; I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t help it. I mean, even if you are a bigoted ass who the hell says Buckwheat anymore? Are there people going around pining for the good ole days of racial slurs? We couldn’t figure out if she really meant it or if she had just been watching the Little Rascals movie and was perhaps a wee bit slow.

I’ve also been thinking about the Three-Fifths Compromise recently. I think it was a question on Jeopardy last week or something. The Three-Fifths Compromise came about when the Constitutional Convention was trying to figure out how many Congressmen each state would be able to send to the House of Representatives. The southern states said, “We want our slaves to be counted as part of the population.” And the northern states said, “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

The Three-Fifths Compromise bothers me to no end. It is bad enough to look at a person and not see a person but see something so inferior to you that you consider it to be a possession more equal to your cow than to yourself. If you are looking at a person and not seeing their worth then there is hope that your perception can be altered, but if you’re looking at a person and seeing a person and are still treating them like livestock or a chair, well, where do you go with that? In this debate the southern states were pretty much acknowledging the humanity of those they were enslaving; no one has ever asked for representation for their cattle.

We don’t come from a happy sunshiny place of nobility and virtue. We come from a murky pond of suffering and good intentions, cruelty and bravery, accomplishments and mistakes, justice and spite. But, like our primordial ancestors, the important thing is that we continue to pull ourselves from the swamp.

Vitamin D and the Sundance Kid

2009-02-15T20:49:00.002-05:00

If you ever want to feel that your life is worthy of entrance to the Sundance Festival put some indie tunes in your ipod, stuff the buds in your ears, press play, and take a walk through your stunningly unspectacular suburban neighborhood.

Also, you should take a walk because if you read a lot of blogs you’re probably low on Vitamin D. Vitamin D is one of those quirks of nature that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about the universe. Our bodies naturally make all the Vitamin D we need through photosynthesis, which is kind of amazing. We’re like plants without chlorophyll! Though, would be kinda fun to be green. Sigh.

ANYWAY So many things about the sun just blow me away. It’s 91 million miles away and you can still go blind from looking at it. And it’s not even that big of a star! If our little solar system had formed around a super giant we would have been sehr screwed.

Well, that was a little unexpected nerdgasm. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go tickle the ivory colored plastics before settling in for some Masterpiece Theatre.

P.S. I made vegan lasagne and a mess in the kitchen. Both were yummy.

P.P.S. If Paul Newman and Robert Redford hadn’t switched roles would it be called the Butch Festival?

Wanting a Ball is not Wanting a Prince

2009-02-15T00:21:00.002-05:00

Valentine’s Day. It’s never been my favorite day of the year. I’ve been known to rail against the soulless commercialization masquerading as a holiday, and to moan about the loneliness of my unloved heart; truth is Valentine’s Day is a masochist’s playground. Hallmark and Hershey’s and TDF aren’t making us miserable; we’re making ourselves miserable.

There’s this Eleanor Roosevelt quote that everyone knows: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
So why the fuck have we consented to feeling like shit?

Because we want to. It’s like Valentine’s Day has become a day of self flagellation, purging ourselves of the horrible sin of being single. I think it’s because we live in such a results driven society. If you want to have a boyfriend and you don’t have a boyfriend then obviously you are doing something wrong or being something wrong and Valentine’s Day is like society telling us that we should sit here quietly and think about what we’ve done. Well, fuck that.

I’m in a surprisingly good mood, an almost alarmingly good mood considering it’s Valentine’s Day. Considering that I had to work. Considering that I’m not in love but would like to be. Considering that I am nowhere society says I should be.

Society is just going to have to chill because I’m doing alright. No tears. No ice cream. No Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movies. No feeling bad about the things I want but do not have. No feeling bad at all.

I day dream a lot. A lot. Like, RIDICULOUSLY a lot. Always have. Even as a wee thing. And I missed many a math lesson thinking about JC Chasez (oh, NSync, my over hormonal 15 yr old self never stood a chance). I’ve been thinking though, if I harnessed half the creative energy I’ve been funneling to embarrassing drivel I would be unstoppable. UN FUCKING STOPABLE. (for some reason feeling empowered makes me want to drop the f bomb all over the place)

Valentine’s Day. I went to work. I came home and watched Battlestar Galactica (best. episode. ever.) and Dollhouse (just when I decided to start tapering my tv viewing joss whedon had to come back to the airwaves- wait, it’s all digital now, back to the fiber optics?) I IMed and texted and talked on the phone with friends near and far. I sat in bed blogging and listening to much too much Mraz. Singing sometimes, smiling often. And now I think I’ll dance through the carpet in my bare feet.

Maybe I’ll find the love I want on the way to finding me, but for now, I have all the love I need.

Jason Mraz's Colon and My Purpose in Life

2009-02-11T00:05:00.001-05:00

I was reading Jason Mraz’s blog, as I am wont to do, -because 1 I enjoy a well crafted personal essay, 2 reading blogs is far more entertaining than reading GRE prep and, 3 Jason Mraz is kinda dreamy- and apparently Mr. Mraz recommends a colonic as a good way to spend this Saturday.

Ah, nothing says romance quite like colon cleansing.

Though, I have to say, if there was ever a holiday that warranted an enema, it’s Valentine’s Day. (What do candy hearts and mawkish greeting cards have to do with martyrdom anyway?) Alas, I’m working on the 14th and I don’t believe that my coworkers would be too pleased if I had a colonic before starting my shift. “What? You have a return? Uh… do you think you could carry the register into the bathroom? What? Shut up! Everyone poops!”

After work though, I’ll be engaging in something equally as ass assaulting as MR A-Z’s favorite past-time: grad school applications (Lord, take me now).

Most grad school applications include a “statement of purpose”. In 500 words or less you have to explain who you are, what you want and why they should want you. 500 words. Which is both too many and too few. Especially when you’re not quite sure who you are, what you want and what the fuck your purpose is, anyway. I feel like I’m sitting down to an exam, number 2 pencil poised over A, B, and C, only I don’t know what the question is.

Okay, to be fair, I’m sure they’re expecting a rather narrower focus than what I’m freaking out about i.e. “what is your purpose in applying to this program”. And most people would be assuaged by that fact, stop bitching and write the damn essay. But that would be far too easy for me.

There has never been such a thing as a human being with just one purpose in life. Any one person can be a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a friend, a writer, a teacher, a pilot, a dancer, an explorer all at once. I’ve never been good at compartmentalizing my purposes. So when University X asks me my purpose for pursuing a Masters in Y I see all the little bits and pieces of who I am and I’m not quite sure which parts to grab onto and display for their judging pleasure.

Half of the purpose of any kind of education is the education itself, learning more about Y so you can go on in the field of Y or F or Z, but the other half of the purpose of education is what you learn about yourself while learning about other people and other things. I’ve always been more concerned –often to my detriment- with the latter. Which I guess sums up what I really feel that my purpose is, to look, to learn, to fail, and fall and grow. Which may be poetic and but sure as hell doesn’t pay the bills.

I was born in the wrong century. The wrong millennium. The wrong epoch, even. I should have been a troubadour or a bard or a sorceress. But I wasn’t born then, I was born here. Which means as much as I could have been a million different things I was only ever meant to be me. So, in conclusion, my purpose is to be me. And, hopefully, sometime before I die, I’ll figure out who that is.

Placebo Psychics and Olfactory Hallucinations

2009-02-03T19:22:00.001-05:00

A couple of days ago, I was ringing up a customer when she said, “Things are going to start getting better for you in February,” and slid her card across the counter. She was a psychic. So, apparently February is going to be my month. And I started wondering about the placebo effect and self-fulfilling prophesies.

Like, could someone be so eager to prove a self proclaimed psychic wrong that they would subconsciously turn February into the worst month of their life? On a lesser degree things like that happen all the time. You go into a math test or an audition telling yourself that you’re going to fail and no matter how talented you are or how hard you studied you’re probably going to psych yourself out and bomb. And that all got the pendulum of my mind swinging in the other direction. If a psychic tells me that things are going to start looking up in February and I choose to believe her can I, via the placebo effect, turn February into 28 days of absolute awesomeness?

Also,
it’s quite possible that I had a stroke today. I was unpacking a box of pants and I swear to God they smelled like ice cream sandwiches.

Presidents; Past, Present, and Future

2009-02-02T20:15:00.002-05:00

PAST

When I was in the fourth grade I was in love with John Adams. I thought he was the cat’s pajamas. Truthfully, this probably had more to do with William Daniels than our second president, as the musical 1776 was the catalyst for my infatuation.
I still love that musical; I have the director’s cut DVD. It’s perfect for me; it has all the geekiness of being a musical with all the nerdiness of historical drama. Nothing quite warms my heart like the idea that our founding fathers were noble and pure of heart, and occasionally broke into song and dance.
My affections for Mr. Adams have waxed and waned over the years. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed when in later history classes I learned of the Alien and Sedition Acts, a series of bills written in the late 1700s, which, if you look them up on wikipedia, I am sure you will discern a frightening familiarity about them. Still it’s hard to hate a man who scampered amongst the Second Continental Congress (yes, there were two of them) singing at them to “Vote Yes! (Sit down, John) Vote for independency! (Someone oughta open up a window!)”
My uncoolness knows no bounds.

PRESENT

Sometimes, on the news, they say “The President” instead of “President Obama” and it takes me a moment to remember that they’re not talking about Bush. And then I go a little gooey and it’s like I’m getting the election results all over again. In a week, or a month, or a year, the gooeyness is going to fade and I’m going to go back to caring exclusively about the issues but right now, for the first time, we have an African American President of the United States. And, I’m nerdy enough to admit that I teared up a bit typing that. Right now I don’t care about what kind of a president he’s going to turn out to be because I am just so damn proud of US as a nation, so proud that WE elected a black man to be our president. Now, I voted for him because I like him, because I believe in him, because he most closely holds the political opinions and ideals that I hold. But even if he had held political opinions that I disagree with and I had chosen to vote against him I would have been proud of OUR country, because so recently the only thing that would have mattered would have been the color of his skin and he never would have even been nominated. So, now we have an African American President of the United States and in the next four to eight years he is going to prove to be just as capable, intelligent, fallible and human as every old white man who has preceded him.

FUTURE

And now that we have a black man in the White House ANYONE can be president. They’ve always said that, that’s always been part of what people say when they’re talking about how great the U.S. is, how ANYONE can be president. You may be poor and hopeless now but if you work hard enough you too can have the American Dream! But it’s never really been true before. There’s always been the fine print: Catholics need not apply. Jews need not apply. Women need not apply. Blacks need not apply. Latinos need not apply… But not now. Now the door has been opened. And now, who knows? YOU could be president. I could be president! Well, no, not me. I mean, the day I get elected president is the day I emigrate. I would not want to live in a country that has declined to the point where I am considered the most qualified person to lead them. That’s pretty much the definition of dystopia. Yeah, so, not me, but you could still so totally be president now!

Clean Underwear, Algebra, and Younger Men

2009-01-28T22:25:00.003-05:00

Plans for the day thwarted by snow. Again. So, instead of lunch with a friend I studied for the GRE in my pajamas and Jem hoodie (it’s truly, truly, truly outrageous). And I did a load of laundry because it appears that I do not have an infinite supply of clean underwear.

I’m nervous about the GRE, but more than a little excited. Because the test feels like something I can control, unlike the number of applicable letters of recommendation I’ll be able to garner. I haven’t taken a math class in 10 years and while the thought of being tested on skills that have lain dormant for years is frightening, if I do a bit of studying and practice (I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.) I should be fine. Whereas there’s no book that can help me go back in time and foster stronger and longer lasting relationships with my former professors (My kingdom for a TARDIS). SO instead of freaking out about that I’m focusing on test prep. And Dear, God, do I need it.

The problem I have had with math is that somewhere along the line I grabbed onto the idea that if I didn’t get something right the first time that meant I was bad at it, that I was stupid. In my head, for as long as I can remember, I have equated hard work with not being good enough. Which is why I have no discipline and tend to suck at rewriting. It’s also why I’ve never really worked hard at anything in my life. And you can see how well that turned out for me.

IN OTHER NEWS:
According to this comic it’s not at all creepy for me to date 20 year olds. So we’re good to go on Michael Cera and/or Zac Efron. Sorry, 19 year olds, rules are rules.

In a Yellow Wood

2009-01-27T23:36:00.002-05:00

English teachers and guidance counselors like to pin up posters of a glossy Autumn wood with Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken blazoned across it in their classrooms and cozy tell-me-all-your-angsty-teenage-problems-and-I’ll-give-you-a-pass-out-of-gym-class offices. They gaze adoringly up at it and find solace, direction; and they want us to do the same. What they forget though, what most of us forget, is everything but the concluding lines of the poem.

I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference

We remember that the narrator tells us that taking the road less traveled “has made all the difference” but we tend to forget that Frost never tells us exactly what that difference was.

All through my youth this poem was held up as a standard for going your own way, for making choices that few others have made before. Frost is telling us to take the road less traveled. Or is he? Few people point to the first line of the last stanza when trying to rally you to the cause of the individual.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

If this is really the instructional, inspirational poem that we have been led to believe why is he telling us this with a sigh? Is the narrator really doling out advice or is he simply an old man reexamining the choices that he has made wondering what if?

I’ve been bludgeoned with those last two lines of the poem so many times that for the longest time I thought the poem was called The Road Less Traveled. But it’s not, is it? It’s The Road Not Taken. Two more often neglected lines are the last two lines of the second stanza

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

About the same! The poem doesn’t give us a narrator confronted with a choice between the trodden way of the majority or the hard going yet righteous plight of the individual; the right path or the wrong path; a path of thorns or a path of flowers; a path of darkness or a path of light. By the time we get to the end of the poem we seem to forget that the road the narrator chose was really only slightly less traveled than the other.

Now, I’m not saying that the narrator regrets his choice, but what I am saying is that the choice wasn’t as simple as we are often led to believe, nor was it simple to live with. As good or as bad as “the difference” was, the narrator can’t help but wonder what his life would have been had he taken the other, “just as fair” road. Because more often than not life isn’t a straightforward series of choosing right over wrong or even the lesser of two evils, but of trying to figure out which, among a host of choices “just as fair” as the next, is the one you should make. And, more often than not, the deciding factor is as arbitrary as flipping a coin or there being slightly more grass on path A than path B. And we never know what the difference is going to be until after the road has been taken.

I get inspiration and instruction from The Road Not Taken but not in the way that I have been told that I should. To me this poem isn’t about either road; it’s about the traveler. It’s about making a decision, any decision. Because no matter which road you choose or how long you take in choosing there is always going to be a wistful part of you that will look back and wonder what if? It’s human nature to want to go back to that yellow wood and take the other road just to see what there is to see. We’re always going to be curious, we’re always going to have regrets. The important thing is not to get stuck in the crossroads.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Sloth love Chunk

2009-01-26T14:27:00.001-05:00

Giant Sloths are pretty much the coolest things that have ever roamed the Earth.

sloth, with a lower case s, not so much.

I’ve been in my bathrobe all day. It’s funny, cause it’s my day off and I got up early to actually do stuff but then I decided to freak out instead.

For the past few days I’ve been getting excited and hopeful because I found a Masters program at my alma mater that I want to apply to. Then, slowly, I've been rolling to a panicky boil because you need letters of recommendation to apply to grad school and I haven't talked to any of my former professors in years and how would any of them possibly remember me enough to recommend me- if they even remember me at all. But last night I figured what the fuck I'll email them and see what happens.

Then I wake up this morning, rejection-issue dread hanging over me as I go about my internet wanderings and I realize that the application deadline is February 1st and even if I did email my professors and find someone willing to write a letter for me it's way, way too short notice and I'm fucked and my life is just going to continue to be one long chain of misery and dashed dreams. Which was when I REALLY started panicking. Then, for no reason that I can think of, I suddenly remembered that it was the Creative Writing M.F.A. that had a Feb 1st deadline and NOT the Theatre program... which has a deadline of APRIL 1st. So, basically, I've been shitting myself for nothing.

So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 5 hours.

I should probably shower now.

It's alarming how charming I feel

2009-01-24T22:32:00.003-05:00

I’m not exactly what you’d call a girlie girl.

I like bugs.
I hate American football because I think it’s a pussy sport (if I’m going to watch a rugby derived sport it’s gonna be Aussie Rules).
I’d rather drink Guinness than anything else.
I fear the mall.
I’m watching Battlestar Galactica right now.

But two customers complimented my eyeshadow today and that made me feel pretty.

P.S. I’ve always like the idea of being alarmingly charming. That line from “I Feel Pretty” is probably my favorite thing about West Side Story

Tale of Old C$%t

2009-01-22T20:05:00.002-05:00

H.B. is on vacation this week and I was lulled into a false sense of security. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and children of all nations, races and religions were joining hands and dancing through the streets. Getting up for work Tuesday morning wasn’t nearly as painful knowing that I had a blissful H.B. free week ahead of me.

*sigh*

I had forgotten about O.C., or, more accurately, it wasn’t so much that I had forgotten about her as I thought that the absence of H.B. would mitigate any suffering O.C. chose to inflict. *sigh*

O.C. is a terrible beast with noxious, flaming breath and poison dripping from her jagged claws.

She used to manage the store but retired a while back and now comes in part time because she enjoys the challenge of trying to make me cry. She addresses me in the same contemptuous tone H.B. employs and I often imagine them at the Olive Garden, cackling over unlimited soup, salad, and bread sticks, as they plot the next wave of their assault on my will to live.

In order to make it through her shift without punching her in the face I focused on unpacking shipment while listing school that I am thinking of applying to. Also, an Ace of Base song made an appearance on the company controlled playlist and that helped.

P.S. Today I unpacked a box of “Fairyland Lavender” sweaters. This isn’t the Limited Too. Grown women shop here; I think lavender alone would have been sufficient. Unless instead of Asian children our sweatshops employ magical creatures and the sweaters really were more than your average purple… I’ll have to take a closer look tomorrow.

Readin' 'Ritin' an' Prime Time TV

2009-01-20T00:50:00.003-05:00

Good writing always has a profoundly physical effect on me. Either the writer inspires me and makes me feel like I must immediately throw down the book and pick up a pen, or, he/she has a way with words that makes me feel as if I am the tiniest creature on the earth, that I will never write anything of significance; how could I ever hope to achieve anything that nears the brilliance of the words before me!

Jeanette Winterson is one of the later. John Green, one of the former. I asked for, and received, his latest book, Paper Towns, for Christmas. Two pages in and it’s already a struggle to get through because I just can’t resist the urge to push his words away and start crafting my own. Which sounds like an insult but is probably the highest compliment I could give him.

I scribbled for a while before retracting my pen and heading upstairs. I’m fairly certain that, a couple of days ago, I finished the story that I’ve been working on. Which is good and all. You know, woooo! But, well, my head always feels a bit empty after I’ve finished something, like I can hear a rattling in my brain and what is rattling around up there is usually self indulgent drivel. So, as I said, I scribbled for a while and then I went upstairs; because it’s Monday night and I had a date with my televison.

I have always wanted to be one of those people that scoff at television, ranting condescendingly about how it’s replaced religion as the opiate of the people and there are far better, less pedestrian things I could be doing with my time; both of which are sadly true. But, just as I will never wear a size 0 pair of jeans or go to the circus (clowns….*shudder*), I will never be one of those fully liberated, totally self actualized, TV free people.

Yes, there is a lot of crap on television. A lot. But there is also a lot of good. Okay, not a lot, but there’s some good out there. There’s even a bit of great, though they tend to cancel that rather quickly. Thing is, I am overwhelmingly in love with stories. And if someone is going to give me a good story; a funny story, an interesting, unusual story, well, I’m going to pay attention regardless of the medium and the fact that I had to wade through sewage to find it.

Monday is a good night for TV. I watch House because it is often interesting and Hugh Laurie is a god. And if you don’t believe me watch an episode of House and then watch an episode of Blackadder. I watch the Big Bang Theory because I am a raging nerd and they make me giggle, and Two and Half Men because my parents got me started on it and there’s nothing quite like having to stifle your laughter over a hummer joke so you don’t have to explain to your parents why it was funny (Chuck Lorre seriously needs to give me a job). And I watch How I Met Your Mother because it is usually quirky (though, I have to admit, this season they’re not quite up to par on the quirk) and because it gives me that little sliver of delusional hope that you need when you’re 27 and wondering if maybe you should just give up the ghost and become the cat lady already.

I would make an exceptional cat lady. But, hopefully I’ll get my shit together soon because tonight’s House reminded me of something. I decided a while ago that one of the things that I want to do with my life is to be a foster mother, and probably adopt.

I want to get married one day; I want nothing more than to meet someone who is insane enough to not only understand me but to also want to spend their life with me, in spite of all they know. But I don’t see marriage as a task I need to accomplish. I’m not going to settle for less just to have someone around. I have also never been one of those people that feels the need to have a biological child for the sake of having a biological child. If I meet a man who makes me want to have his child that’s great, but if not; there are just so many children already here who desperately need love and if I can save even one of them from the pay-by-the-child foster care system then that’s what I want to do. The foster care system makes me want to punch people in the face.

Course, none of that matters til I actually get said shit together. But a finished story is progress. Also, am hoping to apply to grad programs unless Steven Moffat wants to give me a job in which case, screw you all I’m going to Wales! I’m thinking of writing him a letter:

Dear Sir, I think you’re swell and I want nothing more than to be you when I grow up (I mean seriously, Dr. Who AND Coupling). I have negligible training and absolutely no experience but you should, like, totally hire me to write for and star on Dr. Who. Yours sincerely…

Yeah, well, it was just a thought.

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

2009-01-18T17:29:00.001-05:00

*spoiler alert*

Bears.

Koalas are not bears; they are marsupials. They’re also junkies. The exist solely on eucalyptus which has little nutritional value and is a narcotic. Which is why when you see them they’re usually asleep.

The bear’s closest living relatives belong to the family that include the walrus, sea lion and seal (at least, according to wikipedia).

Beets.

I think they’re yummy.

Battlestar Galactica.

Oh, it’s back! It’s back! It’s back! It’s back! I have been dancing around gleefully since I set my DVR to record it last week.

Oh, how I have missed Lee Adama’s gorgeous face and righteous indignation; Kara Thrace’s ass kicking insanity (that girl is my fraking hero!); and the cylons! The Cylons!

Okay…so… I’ll admit it, I’ve been kind of waiting for Duala to die for a while now. I liked her when she was with Billy but once she got with Lee she just started to piss me off. She just never seemed like anything more than a roadblock between Lee and Kara (Funny, though, I don’t have the same problem with Sam, at all. Interesting.). Apparently Lee and Duala were married in the original series, so I’m guessing that’s why they were put together this go around as well. Never saw the original so I don’t know what kind of relationship they had in the 70s, though, as Starbuck was a dude back then there probably wasn’t as much sexual tension between him and Apollo. So, I didn’t care for Di, but still, What the fuck?! Was not expecting that to happen at all like it did.

Speaking of what the fucks?! Am DYING to know what’s going on with Kara. There always is something going on with Kara. And if she’s not the final cylon (and I’m really glad she’s not because there would just be something innately wrong with Kara Thrace as a cylon. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a cylon) then what the fuck is she?

Which brings us to the big reveal…the final cylon… Ellen. ELLEN TIGHE. Ellen, who died on New Caprica. Though, there were still resurrection ships around then, so she may still be with us, but none of the cylons seem to know that she is one of them and wouldn’t her rebirth among them have tipped them off? What I want to know is, did she know that she was a cylon?

So many questions. I’m trusting the writers not to let me down; I’m sure they want their last season to be the best fraking thing they’ve ever written. I just wish it was Friday already.

nobody knows but jesus

2009-01-16T22:29:00.003-05:00

At work today I had to continuously remind myself that my current situation is entirely attributed to my decisions and no one else’s- or else I’m sure I would have punched H.B.* in the face.

She’s horrible, at least, she’s horrible to me. 95% of the time she speaks to me with this tone in her voice, as if I am a stepchild she wishes she could hit. I still have the lines in the palm of my hand from where my fingernails dug in as I internalized the waves of evil I wished to unleash upon her. Oh, what I would do if I didn’t have debt.

Thing is though, H.B. isn’t really the problem here, I am. When you’re happy with your life you don’t cry in the bathroom at work. Which is pathetic, I mean, really. Okay, it’s not like I was wailing; it was more of a small, angry burst followed by a what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-get-your-shit-together-and-get-back-out-there series of deep breaths as I blotted my eyes. Yeah, still pathetic.

If I were at all happy with the state I’m in I wouldn’t be bothered or I would take steps to resolve the matter. But H.B. is a problem that isn’t worth resolving. Sure, I could have an awkward conversation with our boss about it, followed by an even more awkward conversation involving boss lady, H.B. and I. And maybe we would hug it out and things would get better. Then what? Then I would be slightly less miserable as I run for a pink pencil skirt in a 10 for Ms. “I’m sure I’m an eight, it must be marked wrong”.

If only I got paid for blogging.

*H.B.=heinous bitch. i feel slightly less guilty talking smack if I don't use her actual name. Not like anyone at work knows about this blog.

awwwwwwkward

2009-01-16T11:33:00.001-05:00

If you find yourself forced to use an unlockable, one at a time, public restroom where the toilet is in full view to the entire restaurant when the door is opened, the next person who has to use the facilities will undoubtably open the door -WITHOUT KNOCKING- while you're trying to change your tampon.

The Universe and Daniel Radcliffe's Penis

2009-01-14T11:03:00.001-05:00

Rabbie Burns was right, the best laid plans of mice and men often do go astray. Not like my plans are ever well laid though.

This is how things go when I make plans. I decide to do A. The Universe says, no, you will do what I want you to do. I decide to do B; the Universe says no. Repeat for C, D, E, etc… until I stumble upon what it is the Universe wants and it allows me to proceed. Apparently, last night, what the Universe wanted, more than anything, was for me to see Harry Potter naked.

I wanted to see Spring Awakening. It’s closing on the 18^th so if I don’t see it within the next few days I probably never will. But by the time Sadie and I got to the box office the student rush tickets were all gone (and sorry, I wasn’t going to get up at 6am to get tickets- or pay full price). Then I remembered that I wanted to see Speed the Plow because Norbert Leo Butz is in it for a limited time. Turns out I misremembered just how limited his time there was because when we got to the box office they informed us, yes they did have student rush tickets and that Norbert’s last performance was the night before. Thwarted again. We gave Billy Elliot a go but the guy at the box office curtly informed us that they did not have student rush tickets. He seemed somewhat insulted that we would think his theatre did that sort of thing. Then, we basically flipped a coin on whether to try for Equus or the Little Mermaid. You can guess from the above paragraph what happened next. After finally procuring tickets I went off to SoHo to meet up with Paul and Anna.

There are some people in your life that you just fall in with immediately and things are just easier than they are with most everyone else. You’re more relaxed, funnier, more yourself. Sadie is one of those people for me, so is Paul.

Paul and I met on a backpackers’ tour through southwest England and Wales. He managed to save me from death and dismemberment many times as I was the stupid American who continued to look the wrong way before crossing the street. (I also can’t help remembering that I was rather embarrassing over the tour guide. It’s not my fault, though, he was Scottish. Scottish accents make my brain go loopy. When a Scot is speaking I cannot be held accountable for my actions… ANYWAY…) I remember walking through Shakespeare’s house at Stratford-upon-Avon, they had it all decked out even so far as an assortment of fake foods, as if Mrs. Shakespeare was going to hurry into the kitchen to start on dinner before Will got home from a long day at the theatre. And I felt the need to make such asinine comments as, that’s the ham that Shakespeare was eating when he wrote Romeo and Juliet (I mean, why else would it be in a museum?). It was funny at the time.

I hadn’t seen Paul for 5, almost 6, years and I had forgotten just how easy of a friendship we had had. It was nice to just fall into that, even if only for a day. They left that evening for 3 days in Dubai before returning to Australia. The “they” including his finacee, Anna whom I got to meet yesterday. She is lovely. I friend requested her on facebook. We went to the planetarium; we totally bonded.

All too soon –insert sad face here- it was time to say goodbye. I went off to meet up with Sadie at the Shubert for Equus. Which was fantastic. I had read it senior year of high school, but, as that was 10 years ago now, I had forgotten pretty much everything other than that a kid blinds a bunch of horses and then talks to a shrink. Which, I guess is a pretty fair plot summary. But the play is so much more than plot.

It was a very bare, very grey set. Sparse. Four, large blocks were all that was used in the way of furniture and the cast manipulated them into becoming what they needed them to be for each scene; a chair, a bed, a psychiatrist’s couch. You didn’t need to see the fabric, you believed that they were there. The cast was great. Richard Griffiths was phenomenal. And the writing. God, the writing. It’s a haunting play; disturbing as fuck, but God, Peter Shaffer’s words. Here’s an example:

Martin Dysart: All right! The normal is the good smile in a child's eyes. There's also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills, like a god. It is the ordinary made beautiful, it is also the average made lethal. Normal is the indispensable murderous god of health and I am his priest.

I mean… fuck. The whole play is like that, brilliant sentences violently, and sometimes almost silently, sprayed at you, covering you like a damp you can’t get out of your clothes no matter how long you hang them to dry. Writing like that makes me feel terrifyingly insignificant, in the most amazing way.

I wrote a sentence at intermission that I am rather fond of. Kept it in my head all the way home, sitting on the train back to Ronkonkoma, saying it over and over until I found suitable fellows for it. It is, apparently, the start of something new. Who knows, maybe a play. Maybe a screenplay as it seems all the money is in L.A. and none in New York. Whatever it may be it is new and that’s exciting.

All in all, it was a very good day.

Microwavable Socks and Other Wonders of the Modern World

2009-01-11T21:55:00.002-05:00

I seem to have a blog blockage. For the past couple of weeks every time I have attempted to compose a blog I have gotten no further than a paragraph before scrapping it to go read Harry Potter or play Rock Band. As long as you’re alive there’s something to write about; sometimes it’s just hard to see what’s worth reading about. But here I am, once again, four sentences in, and already staring vacantly at my DVD collection wondering if there isn’t something better I could be doing with my time. And distracted by the fact that Word is drawing red squiggly lines under each occurrence of the word blog in this blog. You’d think that it would recognize blog as a word by now.

One of my least favorite sentences is: “That’s not a word.” Well, says who? All words are, are sounds with meaning. You make a noise and communicate to someone that the noise you are making correlates to this tall brown thing with the green things on top and voila! You know have a word that means tree. Or, rather, you have the sound “tree” that now means “the tall brown thing with the green things on top”. You get what I’m saying. Words are not these innate, inalienable fixtures in the universe. We can create and destroy them as we see fit. And we do. I mean, how often does anyone say affable anymore? Everyone knows what a blog is, though. No matter how often Word tries to argue the point with me.

Well, that was an interesting tangent. Though, can you really go off on a tangent if you had yet to establish a topic?

ANYWAY. Battlestar Galactica (2 more words unrecognized by Word) starts up again on Friday. FRIDAY! Yipee! I heart Battlestar Galactica and I have the social life to prove it. If a geek and a nerd found a way to simultaneously fertilize the ovum of a dork, I would be that zygote. Battlestar Galactica is a truly wonderful thing and I am looking forward to finding out who the final cylon is and what the fuck happened to Earth.

Speaking of truly wonderful things: my feet are currently housed in microwavable slippers. Scented too. Cranberry. They were a Christmas present from my brother’s girlfriend. Not only are my feet toasty warm but they smell delicious! Microwavable slippers. Brilliant!

And I’m staring off into space again…

I’m still kicking ass on Rock Band, btw. Cause I know you’ve been wondering. Problem is I don’t actually own it. My cousin brought it over here and has yet to retrieve it, though I know the extraction date is growing ever closer. Any moment she’ll step out of the darkness to claim what is hers. She could be on her way. Right. Now.

So, I’m thinking about eloping with her Rock Band. Because absconding with it would just be theft and stealing, let alone stealing from family, is tres uncool –at least that’s what I’m telling myself, daily- HOWEVER, if Rock Band and I are united in the bonds of holy matrimony well then, what is the phrase, let no man tear us asunder. There’s gotta be some religion out there with no qualms about till-death-do –you-parting man and machine. I bet if I did a google search I’d find some pretty startling results. Hey, I mean, it worked out pretty alright for Helo and Sharon.

It’s 9:30 and I just turned on the Golden Globes. I have no idea why. I feel a little bit like Audrey Hepburn in the beginning of Sabrina as she stares longingly down into a dinner party that she was not invited to. Except, you know, dirty. I’m sure I would feel entirely differently if I were wearing a shiny loaner dress, sipping champagne and waiting with bated breath for them to call my name, but as I’m not I kinda wish that I hadn’t already showered.

2009-01-04T14:01:00.002-05:00

You’ve gotta find your big, gigantic drum kit

It often feels that my life has just been one long, drawn out existential crisis. While that may be great for my writing life it makes the rest of it, the finding a way to pay the bills part, kind of a bitch.

We're all just looking for our big, gigantic drum kit; something to fill our lives with passion and purpose. Some of us (like my mom who obnoxiously found her calling at the age of 4 while watching "Miss Frances' Ding Dong School") figure it out and go on to live happy and productive lives. The rest of us, well we blog from our parents' basement and fret about our negligible contributions to society.

And we play Rock Band.
oh yes, Rock Band.

The following is a pretty accurate representation of what happens when I play Rock Band

after years of searching it turns out that my metaphoric big, gigantic drum kit might actually be a literal big, gigantic drum kit.

Most depressing sentence. Ever.

2008-12-30T01:36:00.004-05:00

I’ve been working on a new short story. Which is kind of great because I have been feeling pretty costive lately and getting to that “I’m never going to write anything ever again” scary place with writers’ block. So, you know, yay.

Anyway, I had typed up a decent word count and it wasn’t really getting anywhere anymore so I figured I’d take a break and googlestalk Jodi Reamer. Big mistake. The result was about as good for my mental health as watching Trainspotting while being forced to run to exhaustion on a treadmill.

Jodi Reamer was the first agent I queried. I actually waited a week until I started sending queries to other agents (it took me about that long to realize it was pretty stupid to delay reaching out to other agents just because I hadn’t been rejected yet). I chose to query Ms. Reamer first because she is John Green’s agent and I hope, one day, to write with a fraction of the awesomeness of which he endows his books. Also, it doesn’t hurt that she represents Stephenie Meyer who made like a gazillion dollars with her Twilight series.

I sent in my query and sample pages in the beginning of September and I haven’t heard back yet. I enclosed an SASE so I would have expected a form rejection letter by now. So, unfortunately, her silence has engendered a sliver of hope. If she (read: her intern/editorial assistant) had decided that she was not interested in seeing my full manuscript I should have received my “Dear Author, Thanks for thinking of me but you kind of suck,” letter by now. Course, what it most likely means is that she just hasn’t rejected me yet.

In my googlestalking I found a link to the aforementioned Meyers’ website that contained a sentence that makes me want to find a sword to fall on.

“And that's how, in the course of six months, Twilight was dreamed, written, and accepted for publication.”

Six months????? SIX MONTHS?!?!?!?

If it weren’t for the fact that I really, really love my computer I would have proceeded to bludgeon myself to death with it. That she wrote the book in under six months really doesn’t faze me. Everyone writes at their own pace, blab, blah, blah. What kills me though is that in less than six months she found an agent and a publisher. AN AGENT AND A PUBLISHER. Three months down since I sent out my first query. Wanna place bets on whether or not I have a book deal by March?

I think I need a sedative.

The Nostalgia Assault

2008-12-29T18:46:00.000-05:00

About this time ten years ago I was fretting over college application essays (most of which I didn’t bother to write). The anniversary of this seems to have inspired an onslaught of nostalgia in my former classmates, leading them to friend request me on facebook. (They’ll never find me on myspace, I use a fake name. MWAHAHAHAA!!!)

A very few of these requests have inspired an ‘aww, I remember you.’ More have brought about an ‘um… and you are?’ response. While, most have caused a ‘Seriously? Cause you spoke all of 2 words to me in high school…’ I have kept these reactions to myself and graciously accepted their requests. I am nothing if not magnanimous. I’m also vaguely curious and more than a little bit bored. Still not going to the reunion though.

I decided that today I would ready the query letters and sample pages for the next four agents that are going to reject me (2 of them want 50pp with the query letter, kill me now, please). So, of course, after about 5 minutes work on that it struck me that my room desperately needed cleaning. While half-heartedly attempting that I found a large album from my Sweet 16. The front half is signed by the people who were there. Apparently “7&8” was this epically hysterical inside joke that I shared with about 20 of my then BFFs. I have absolutely no idea what it means today. The second half is a series of collages I made from my cards. And you know what? I am freakin good at making collages. For realz. Sadly, monster.com doesn’t have any collagers wanted postings.

I keep turning around and looking forlornly at my printer.

I really should get to those queries.

*sigh*

That's Goddamn right

2008-12-21T11:32:00.000-05:00

Anyone who can work retail between October and January and still enjoy Christmas music should be studied in a lab.

The retail industry is good at two things: sucking your soul out through your pores and destroying Christmas. On the sales floor you're attacked from all sides. Customers bitter and annoyed by all the people they have to buy presents for. Companies trying to coddle, cajole, and cheat consumers out of every possible cent. And the incessant repetition of the same five Christmas songs sung by a series of increasingly irritating performers. I fear that if I ever meet Jessica Simpson I will involuntarily punch her in the face as the reminder of the countless times I have been forced to listen to her rendition of "Baby, it's Cold Outside" will just be too much to bear.

We spend too much money on the wrong things. And, yes, I'm including myself in this. Very much so. Looking at Christmas from the least cynical point of view we are, most of us, buying presents for the right reasons; because we want to do something nice, to give something nice to the people we care about. We want to make them happy. So, ok, yeah, when you get that iphone or ps3 or DVD box set that you asked for you're happy about it. But how long does that happiness last? When was the last time you got a gift that spoke to your soul? When was the last time that you got a gift that enriched your life and kept giving? When was the last time you got a gift that really felt like a gift? And when was the last time that you gave one? Maybe it's different for you but it's been my experience that we ask for the wrong things. And I think that, more than anything else is what is depressing me this holiday season. That and the fact that I missed Santa.

One of my favorite things about Christmas, one of the few things that has yet to be tainted, is Fire Truck Santa. Every year the local fire department decks out an engine with Christmas lights and decor and one of the fire fighters dresses up as Santa. The engine drives down every street in town waving and shouting and throwing candy canes. I remember being so surprised and excited our first Christmas in the new house when I realized that they did that in this town too. I look forward to this one silly moment with such ridiculous glee. At twenty-seven it still makes me feel like a little girl who believes that anything is possible. That there's a man out there who dedicated his life to bringing joy to the entire world. And is successful. That magic exists and people use it for good. That sometimes getting what you want is as simple as asking for it. When that truck passes by the house is when it really starts to sink in that Christmas is coming and I better start enjoying myself while I still can because before you know it the gifts will be unwrapped, the lights will come down and everything will be just a little bit greyer. Once I see Santa waving and shouting Ho! Ho! Ho! I let myself enjoy Christmas. Tonight when I got home I could hear the sirens wail, but they were taunting me. Santa had gone and he wasn't coming back.

I'll admit it; I'm still pouting a little bit. I'll get over it but right now it's like somebody else blew out all the candles on my birthday cake.
Fortunately for me I wasn't unoccupied long enough for my pout to bloom into melancholy. Jacki came over and we made vegan chocolate chip cookies (which turned out far better than the brownies, since we actually followed directions this time, at least, for the most part) and watched Shawshank Redemption.
Shawshank is one of those movies that I had always meant to see but never quite got around to it. Kind of like I had always wanted to check out Modest Mouse but never did until Johnny Marr joined up. And then I went to two concerts just so I could watch him play…but, I digress…

It's Jacki's favorite movie and I can understand why. I'm going to have to read the book now and that's definitely saying something, as I am not exactly what you would call a Stephen King fan. The only book of his I have ever read is On Writing. I just don't do horror. And "It" (movie) scarred me for life. Clowns… * shudder *

We all have our prisons. Sometimes the world puts us there and sometimes we build them ourselves. Sometimes you break free only to realize that the outside world you've been staring at through the bars is nothing more than a courtyard in a larger prison. The question is do we give in to the institutionalization or do we pick up our rock hammer and start tunneling through the next wall?

That's a question I have to ask myself everyday. This quarter life crisis has been going on for far too long now. It's getting old. And 40 hours a week of retail slavery can make a person feel like maybe this really is all that there is. Maybe life is nothing more than what you do to stay alive. What's the point in playing the harmonica or dreaming about the ocean when it's only going to make you want to do more than exist? When it comes down to it, all the myriad of decisions we make everyday that decide who we are, are just variations on two choices:

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

That's Goddamn right.

I don't wanna run through the halls of my high school

2008-12-19T23:02:00.000-05:00

I am not a John Mayer fan.

i know many girls go weak at the knees for his scruffy white boy indiepop tunes but he just doesn't do it for me. (even though scruffy white boy indiepop usually does)

Now, I haven't exactly listened to his entire oeuvre so it's not really fair to make a judgement of him based only on the few songs I have heard but as none of them have inspired me to run out and by his albums my judgement stands.

My problem with Mr. Mayer stems mainly from 2 of his popular songs; Waiting on the World to Change and Daughters

Waiting on the World to Change can basically be summed up by this:

Yay, apathy!

or

eh.

"It's not that we don't care,
We just know that the fight ain't fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change"

The fight is never going to be fair unless people fight to make it that way. And who backs down from fighting for what they believe in because the fight isn't fair? I mean, seriously. If Rosa Parks had waited for the world to change we'd still have color coded water fountains. And there really wasn't much fair about that fight. Nothing ever changes by doing nothing. Unless, you know, the nothing you're doing is not eating, which is a hunger strike, which is actually something...ah, you know what I mean.
This song just makes me angry.
(if by any chance the lyrics were meant ironically or as an exercise in reverse psychology then I offer my humble apologies.)

The song that really pisses me off though, is Daughters. Because I thought that I kinda liked it until I really listened to the lyrics one day and realized that it's pretty freakin misogynistic. The song would be fine if it weren't for this bit of juxtaposition towards the end:

"So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too

Boys, you can break
You'll find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without the warmth from
A womans good, good heart"

So, basically, what I get from this is that if life is rough to boys they can take it. But heavens! You better be good to girls because they just don't have the strength to deal with the world. Oh yeah, and you need girls to grow up to be good women so that they can be there and support the boys who are going through the trials that girls aren't able to face.

GAH!

I kinda like Dreaming with a Broken Heart and that "say what you need to say" song. I used to like No Such Thing until the other day when I came home to find a notice about my impending 10 year high school reunion.

*sigh*

I was supposed to be rich and famous by the time I was 25. That was the plan. The entirety of it, actually. I mean, when you're this fabulous success is just supposed to find you, right? Yeah, well, 25 has come and gone and I'm still wondering what the hell do you do with a B.A. in English. You know, other than blogging. God, what was I thinking? ENGLISH?!?! ...I wonder what it's like to have marketable skills...

Let's be honest, there are only three reasons to go to your high school reunion:

A) You are wildly successful and want to rub it in the faces of everyone who never liked you in high school

B) You married someone wildly successful or ridiculously hot and you want to rub it in the faces of everyone who never liked you in high school

C) You had many meaningful friendships in high school but due to circumstances beyond your control you have completely lost contact with all of them and are looking forward to seeing them again and catching up.

The advent of the internet has made C virtually impossible. I really can't think of anyone that I am not in some way in touch with now that I would want to connect with. Thank you, MySpace, thank you.
As of this moment I have yet to achieve anything near wild success. I haven't even achieved tame success. All my success is potential, not kinetic.
And, unless I have any famous (and hot) readers out there who would like to step up and escort me to this thing, I am 0 for 3.

So, really, the reason that I don't like No Such Thing anymore is because I'm bitter about the state of my life. Which isn't fair, is it, John Mayer, to hate YOUR song because of MY life? No, not fair at all. I guess you'll just have to wait for me to change.

P.S.
I wanna be a Sea Shepherd now. Blame Animal Planet.

Reject me, Baby

2008-12-17T06:27:00.000-05:00

I have always had this paralytic fear of rejection. It has probably been the strongest motivating force in my life since the first grade. Maybe kindergarten. But definitely not before then. I was the shit in pre-school. Seriously. I was the kid all the other kids told their parents about when they asked them how their day was. And the boys LOVED me.

Ah, crap, I peaked at four.

Anyway. Kids got mean and I got self conscious and all my awesomeness got swallowed up by a swirling vortex of low-self esteem and fear. And it's pretty much been my compass. I quit field hockey when I got to high school because I didn't get that when they let you start a lot that means you're good. I never applied to Duke because it was my dream school and I was sure there was no way they were ever going to accept me. All my schools were safety schools. And auditions. * shudder * I can sing really well- when I'm not being judged. Put me in front of a director with a clipboard though, and I'm flat and sharp and all of a sudden afraid to sing with any kind of emotion. It's ridiculous in the saddest possible way. So, I take refuge in the written word. In my words. I write. Poems. Stories. Self indulgent blogs. And that works pretty well until you find yourself with a manuscript that you think is good enough to be published and read by people who aren't your best friends. Because that's when you need to find yourself an agent. And good luck with that.

Just thinking about query letters makes me feel like throwing up. The fact that I've queried at all is frankly a miracle. Here's the run down so far: 6 agents queried. 3 polite rejections. 1 silent rejection (she said on her page if you don't hear from her in 6 weeks, she isn't interested. I didn't). 2 I haven't heard from either way. Now, in the grand scheme of things 4, possibly 6 rejections isn't really notable. I mean, Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times. But for a girl who has worn a lovely shade of yellow for the past 20 odd years it's kinda hard to deal with. But, and this has been pretty shocking for me, not as hard as I would have thought.

Okay, the first round was pretty damn depressing. There may have been bitter, self-loathing tears involved. It's hard not to doubt yourself. If this manuscript is as good as I think it is then why didn't any of them think so? If writing is good then it should be universally accepted as good, right? Thankfully, I have an awesomely supportive and intelligent bff who kicked my butt a little bit and reminded me of an important fact. I love Pride and Prejudice. I think that it's swell. I want to climb into it and live there- just as long as Colin Firth gets to be my Darcy. Megan, on the other hand, hates it. HATES. IT. It makes her want to gouge her eyes out. That -and her much appreciated bullying- gave me what I needed to go forward with the next round of queries.

I keep getting rejected but it's easier to deal with. In fact, I sent out the latest round of queries today and I'm almost looking forward to the rejections. BRING EM ON!!! REJECT ME, BABY! C'MON!! Every rejection I get just brings me a step closer to finding the agent who's going to want to represent me. I'll just keep querying till there's no one left and then fuck it there's always self publishing. I won't make a cent but at least I'll know that I did all that I could. Because that's the real test. Writing has always come pretty naturally to me but believing in myself is something that I have to work hard at every day. And strange as it may seem all the rejection that I've had in my life (personally and professionally) recently is helping me to do that.

So, bring it on, world. Bring it on. The more you reject me the closer I get to being who I need to be.

I am so deep at three o'clock in the morning

minty fresh failure

2008-12-16T12:29:00.000-05:00

"Are brownies supposed to boil?"

Heh. Yeah. I said that last night. And it was awesome. And I mean that in the traditional, original meaning of the word, not in the "ohmygodit'slikesototallycool" usage. As in inspiring awe. Because nothing quite shocks and awes like opening your oven to find your brownies boiling.

Cuzcuz and I decided that chick flicks and chocolate were needed.
(we watched Muriel's Wedding btw.)

So, she stopped and shopped for a few baking essentials before swinging by my place.

Any normal chicks would have turned to one of the four vegan cookbooks in my kitchen for a recipe but not us. We chose to look up non-vegan recipes at foodnetwork.com and convert them ourselves because we just had to be clever and creative...

Cut to the boiling brownies.

And hours of laughter. Because those damn brownies were literally in the oven for hours. And it was hilarious.

When we finally did remove them and dared to dream, jacki described them as being "somewhere between gum and shoes."

So, yeah, the peppermint brownies were a failure but sometimes failure can be fun and tasty

deep breath in...

2008-12-13T10:36:00.000-05:00

...and out

some days, okay, who am I kidding, MOST days, I have to implement a series of breathing exercises and repeat a mantra in order to make it through my shift. today's mantra:

it is not the customer's fault that you are dissatisfied with your life.

the amount of times i had to repeat that to myself (sometimes, i'll admit it, aloud) in order to remain calm, and not take my frustration out on the poor woman who just wanted me to tell her how much the teal sweater set was, is beyond sad.

other mantras include:

this is not your life
you will not assault the customers
i am developing an exit strategy
it takes strength to be gentle and kind

or i just think about puppies. cuddly adorable theoretical puppies. or, puppies that come with good looking men who like to spoon and do all the dog walking/poop picking up themselves

when that fails there's always chocolate
or drugs

which reminds me

if you're feeling kind of depressed watching sid & nancy followed shortly thereafter by slc punk! might not be the best of decisions.

who's up for a rousing good time of drugs and accidental death?

ah... warms the heart, doesn't it?

beauty school dropout

2008-12-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

There are things you shouldn't do on a whim......like cut your own bangs

Some things come naturally to me like harmonizing and bowling and making things sound dirty when they're not. But hair cutting is not one of them.

You'd think that cutting in a straight line would be easy but apparently you need some kind of training for that.
Who knew?

in other news:
I think my uterus is a cylon.

this new b.c. is kicking my ass and I am seriously considering a sex change so that I no longer have to put up with the bloating and the cramps and the wolfing down of chocolate as if I had been attacked by dementors.

and i have always harbored a secret desire to write my name with a stream of pee

venti is italian for bad idea

2008-12-08T03:30:00.000-05:00

another day off where i stayed snuggly tucked into my bed day dreaming until noon.   

by about 4 though i had had enough of internet tv and my inability to do anything productive while in my own house so i threw a load in the washing machine and fled. i drove around aimlessly for a while and then settled down at a starbucks to write.  

 i had a venti gingersnap latte at about 5 and i am STILL FREAKIN WIRED.  if it weren't for my toe i'd be running around in circles.  on the upside i actually was dramatically and surprisingly productive today.  Lots of writing at Starbucks. A lot of it was self indulgent drivel that i'll spare you but it served its own purpose, shaking things loose and letting me get through the crap and break into some of the good stuff.  Once I returned to my basement I called my best friend so she could bully me into doing what needed to be done  i.e. applying for a new job, querying agents.

  job is applied for and i have queried 3 more agents (the 3 on the list of 10 meg had me come up with last time i called her for some bullying that wanted equeries without sample pages. those were the least stressful to send. one agent wants 50pp and that makes me want to throw up a little bit)  now that that is done and it is midnight and i have to be at work at 930 i would really like to slip under the covers and drift into a lovely dream   BUT VENTI LATTES ARE THE WORK OF THE DEVIL!!!!  -though, had i done so i would have the IM cuzcuz just sent me about Flogging Molly. Course it would have gone to my phone and I would have seen it in the morning- but still.

oooooh, this is going to be awesome

...heaven knows i'm miserable now

2008-12-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

When you're at your meaningless, soul-sucking job that makes you want to do harm to yourself and others people who recognize you from high school should not be allowed to shop there.