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October 31, 2005
A Leatherman, Little Bo-Peep, and a Man Dressed As Boxed Wine Are All Sitting In This Bar. . .
Halloween, my erstwhile favorite holiday, rolls around again. "Erstwhile" because while, in theory, Halloween is still tops-- think: free candy, a reason to re-watch Ernest Scared Stupid and The Worst Witch, license to play dress up, and best of all, the thing that makes this holiday different from all others, no family obligations, no relatives to endure or phone calls to make-- I have had a running streak bad Halloween luck.
It started when I was seventeen, a senior in high school, and my nervous breakdown reached its zenith-- or rather, its nadir-- on the morning of Halloween. Of course, I was sick all that autumn and much (no, all) of the preceeding summer, had been resisting (read: flushing) my meds, and sleeping about three hours per night, so it wasn't just Halloween. But I have a memory of finally just losing my shit and not going to school after a tiff that morning with my friend about our Angela (her) and Rayanne (me) costumes.
Then there was The Nightmare On Castro Street, that Onion Slayer could tell you about. I am not a girl easily frightened in urban situations. Onion Slayer and I have traipsed distant parts of the globe with one another and I pride myself on being a child of the city, always at ease, always calm, reliable, sturdy and knowing. But I was clinging to Onion Slayer like a wet cat clings to-- to, well, something dry. This, for me, was unthinkable. Not only am I child of Manhattan, I am also the product of a Chelsea and Greenwich Village rearing. I am not easily made uncomfortable by extravagant displays of homosexual raunch nor by suggestive tableux of homosexual affections! However, it seems, I can be made quite uncomfortable by liberal public displays of heterosexuality.
I had been under the impression going to Castro that the Castro Halloween raunch would be much like the Greenwich Village Raunch with which I feel so at home.
Not so!
Scads of lascivious, menacing lads eyed us leeringly and befouled our ears with the basest of comments and most vulgar of epithets. Lest you think we dressed as Strippers or Naughty Nurses, know that we were positively chaste in our costuming: Onion Slayer was Frida Kahlo, I was Mia Farrow from Rosemary's Baby. If a pregnant, short-haired woman and a moustached woman can't walk arm in arm and pass as lesbians in the Castro, then what, I ask you, has the world come to? The men in the traffic island getting blown by drunk chicks was a nice touch.
Last Halloween, I, dressed as Joan Crawford, spent much of the evening wasting neglected on the couch. I sulked and pouted while boyfriend, in the throes in depression, finsihed a philosophy paper.
So this year I am keeping my expectations low. If I don't wind up in a gutter with my throat slit, I'll consider the night a success. The good thing is that I will be attending a party in a Castro Street apartment, where I can take in the sights unruffled from my lofty perch above the crowd. The bad thing is that the apartment is that of the ex-boyfriend's. Oh, well.
Also, San Francisco is sold out of blonde wigs. I've checked all the places within reasonable walking distance (i.e. within a three block radius of my building), and nothing! This put a crimp in my original costume idea: J.T. Leroy. I scratched that, though, in favor of Salome, which is probably a good thing, as I have no idea where I would have acquired a penis bone necklace and because these days I am feeling more brutal than clever.
Posted by hissycat at 02:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 30, 2005
Insomnia!
You are a Revisionist Historian. You are the Clark
Kent of postmodernists. You probably want to
work in a library or in social services. No
one suspects you of being a postmodernist...
until they read your publications!
What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla
Posted by hissycat at 04:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 29, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
That model, by the way, is Lili St. Cyr.
Posted by hissycat at 07:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
I'm A Vampire
Well, I live like one, anyway. I'm up all night. Then the sun comes up, and I go away.
I slept through a date to go costume shopping for my fantastic costume, and now I'm too bummed and groggy or something to write anything entertaining. What else can I do but give you this week's paperback a day early and hope for a better state of mind tomorrow?
Posted by hissycat at 06:45 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
October 28, 2005
This Demographic Has A Terrible Aftertaste
One would hope that the sentence "They live and eat and breathe the demographic." would be the most grisly of whatever article it comes nestled in. Terrifyingly, the sentence, which appears in yesterday's NYTimes article about Simon Spotlight Entertainment, a new imprint of Simon & Schuster "devoted to pop culture for reader age 18-35," was not.
In case you were not aware, these are the people we have to thank for this minor masterpiece and the novelization of Napolean Dynamite. Things to look forward to: the hilariously! titled "Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay," a book about fantasy football, and a The L Word tie-in called "Same Sex In The City."
In short, SSE is the reification of everything vomitacious and dispicable about Publishing: they are interested in making money, not good books ("'The thing that impresses me most about our editors is that they understand that it's not all about the book,' she said. 'It's about the money you can make from that book.'"); they are entirely market-- and marketing-- driven (. . ."when the series 'The L Word' was burning up Showtime on cable television . . . They gathered a focus group of about a dozen gay women to talk about what type of book they would want to read. . . It is not exactly a formula, Ms. Bergstrom said. 'But we usually know what we want to publish,' she said. 'It's then a matter of wrapping the right author and spokesperson around it.'"); authors are selected for celebrity, not writing ("what we decide to publish is greatly affected by our publicity department - who we can get on 'The Daily Show' or who might be great on a radio tour."); they are the whores of a vertically-integrated media conglomerate (Viacom) that is designed to produce cyclicly-reinforced crap in a closed system ("'most of [SSE's authors] have platforms in other media,'" Ms. Bergstrom said recently."; "the imprint sponsors events with the likes of Jane magazine"; "At one recent meeting, the staff was batting around ideas related to celebrities and MTV"; "What Simon Spotlight Entertainment has done - rather successfully in its first year in business - is to tap quickly into pop culture currents."). The entire SSE imprint is, essentially, a PR department for recycled celebrities.
Not that there is anything shocking about what the article reveals. Still, there is something really eerily Stepford Publishers about the piece. Everyone-- the journalist, the subjects-- is so blithely indifferent to the media or publishing ethics. No, more than indifferent-- they seem completely unaware that there are ethics in media and publishing. The opening anecdote of the SSE head skipping Frankfurt in favor of the Aspen Comedy Festival is delivered without irony. There is the suggestion of iconoclasm in the assertion "that an editorial assistant would be given that level of responsibility is evidence that the imprint does not hew to the traditional hierarchies in many publishing companies," would be funny if their corporate whoredom wasn't so dreadful and frightening.
What, exactly, was the aforementioned 25-year-old editorial assisstant responsible for?
"One book of pictures and quotations from the film [Napolean Dynomite] is already in stores, and another, a flipbook of Napoleon's sweet dance moves, is on the way."
Posted by hissycat at 11:12 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Imaginary Musicals I Never Want To See
While reading the arts section of the New York Times, I had the displeasure of coming across an ad for a musical called Infertility: The Musical That's Hard To Conceive!
I really, really dislike musical comedies that take the names of ailments or bodily functions: Orgasms, Menopause The Musical (which, by the way, does a Menopause The Musical Ovarian Cancer Tour), etc. Not that I've seen any, I just hate them in principle and for triggering awful, reflexivle pun-production in my brain.
Proposed awful names for human physiology-themed musicals that popped into my head, along with requisite tag line:
Conjunctivitis: The Catchiest Thing Around!
Massive Brain Hemmorrage: The Show That Once Started, Never Stops!
(alternately, The Show That Has Audiences Gushing!)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: The Musical You'll Want To See Again and Again and Again and Again!
Syphallis: The Hilarious Comedy That's Burning Up 42nd Street!
Hemerrhoids: The Show That'll Keep You On The Edge Of Your Seat!
--and, perhaps my favorite--
Constipation: The Musical For People Who Don't Give A Crap!
Posted by hissycat at 10:12 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 27, 2005
I Have Always Relied On The Kindness Of Junkies
At three in the morning, not quite tired enough to pass out, but ready to get under the covers with a laptop or book, I went outside to call the cat back in. All I have to do to get the cat to come in is make that pst-pst-pst-pst sound and maybe call her name. She always comes running. The only time she did not come running turned out to be due to her being stuck in a shed. She mewed and I rescued her.
So last night, at 3:15, when she still had not returned, I knew something was wrong. I went outside and called some more. I checked the shed, but though faint mewing could be heard in the yard, it was not coming from the shed. I heard some rustling near the fence and called to where the noise was coming from.
"Mew. Mew. Meeeew," went the cat, who was on the other side of the fence.
"Oh, Gerty," I said, and poked my fingers through the chain-link to pet her sad, sniffling muzzle. I have never known the cat to go over there before. I suspect she managed to crawl under the fance, probably in hot pursuit of a rat, and then was unable to crawl back.
Knowing where she was and knowing I could not get her back through my yard, I went outside and over to the neighbor's locked driveway-front-yard-spacey. I crouched and called. Ten feet away, a drug deal was happening. No matter. Pst-pst-pst-pst. Come here, Cat.
She responded to my voice but was too spooked to cross the open space she'd have to traverse to get to me. For, I don't know, half an hour, I ran back and forth from my yard to the sidewalk trying to coax her home. When I called from my yard, she'd immedeately press against the fence, mewing with desperation to get through to me, but as soon as I came around to call her from the front, she'd become tentative and crouch behind the wheel of a car, blinking sadly at me but too scared to move.
I must have looked just the depth of patheticness-- a messy, unscrubbed girl, crouched on all fours in the street, calling to her lost cat. The drug dealer asked me for a cigarette with a look of protective concern on his face. "Lost your cat?" he said. I told him I could hear her, but I couldn't get her to come back. I didn't have a cigarette on me, so I told him to wait and I'd run in and get one.
"You're really looking for that cat," he said, as I held out the pack to him.
"Yes, I am," I said. "And if you could do me a favor--"
"Yuh," he said. He might have been almost laughing.
"--when you pull out," I said, nodding towards the tricked out pimpmobile he'd been leaning against, getting things out of, putting things in, "please just double-check that my cat isn't under your car."
He laughed a little. "Sure thing," he said. I saw that as he teetered off, doing the wobbly-legged pacing he'd been doing all night, he kept stopping and angling his head. He was checking under the bodies of all the parked cars. I know the cat wasn't under any of them, but I didn't tell him to stop. I didn't want to seem ungrateful.
I went back in to my yard to talk to and calm the cat. I came back out. An acrid-smelling junkie who'd been periodically coming over to talk to the dealer was now crouched down, calling "here kitty kitty kitty, here kitty. tnuck-tnuck-tnuck. here kitty," and rubbing his blackened fingers together as though suggesting to the cat that between his fingers he held something of interest. He seemed so genuinely concerned. "She's spooked," I said to the junkie, consolingly; he seemed to be taking the cat's indifference to heart.
The homeless man who sleeps on the stoop of the corner building had, by now, grumbled awake and come and tottered over to join the search party. I handed out cigarettes like a matron of the community handing out hot coacoa and doughnuts to a search party looking for a lost boy scout. At five in the morning, the junkie, the hobo and I crawled around on all fours calling to the now petrified cat while the drug dealer slowly paced the street, checking under cars.
The thing is, the cat, before the search party had gotten going, had come pretty close to the fence, and I knew that all the commotion was scaring her and that if everyone would just get quiet and go away, she'd probably back home in five minutes. But I was so moved and touched and grateful for their neighborly concern that I couldn't tell them that. Besides, it wasn't like these were neighbors from the building next door who I could thank and tell to go home to bed while I handled it. What else were they going to do? Where else were they going to go? I didn't want to be rude. The junkie, who I sometimes see panhandling on 16th street, was now extending charity to me. How could I turn that down?
By six, the search party, weary was breaking up and staggering off. The drug dealer was the first to leave, peeling out in the pimpmobile after checking underneath it first. Then the homeless man, then the junkie.
"When they" the junkie said, meaning the people in the house next door, "come out, you can get in."
I nodded.
"You'll get your cat, " he said saddly, and staggered off.
Ten minutes later, the street was empty. Apart from the lowing of the garbage trucks that had begun their morning creep down the avenues,it was quiet. I sat down and called to the cat with my eyes closed. She bulleted out from the neighbor's yard and through the front gate that leads to my own, as I expected she would, once the neighbors' well-meaning commotion had quieted down.
Posted by hissycat at 07:57 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 26, 2005
Sometimes The Satire Writes Itself, Part Two
Um, I want to write something funny about this news story. But I can't think of anything as funny as the story itself:
Community mourns chicken Tuesday October 25, 07:38 AMA community mourning the death of a mystery "baby" was told: "Stop grieving, it's only a chicken."
A makeshift shrine of flowers and cards sprang up after a member of the public discovered the remains of a foetus in a back alley in Anfield, Liverpool.
Merseyside Police cordoned off the scene to investigate, but tests soon revealed that it was only a chicken foetus.
(via Feministe)
Posted by hissycat at 08:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Sometimes The Satire Writes Itself
In case you missed yesterday's NYTimes article, which was tucked away in the business section, the White House has served The Onion with a Cease & Desist order against unauthorized use of the presidential seal.
Posted by hissycat at 02:12 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
How To Be A Pyschotic Ex
with apologies to Lorrie Moore
First, get dumped. This step is essential. If you can manage to get fired the following day, score!
Getting fired will provide you with the unoccupied daytime hours you will need to destroy property, not to mention the aimless daytime hours to sleep through, which you will come to appreciate more and more with every passing weekday night on which you decide to get plastered and do something stupid.
Remain friends with your ex, even if it breaks your heart. Especially if it breaks your heart. Be so adamant about friendship that when he forgets to return a phone call on an evening he said he "might be up for hanging out," freak the fuck out like you've never freaked out before. Don't be put off by the fact that, when you were his girlfriend, you did not whip yourself up like a banshee on account of one little missed call. You now have permission to blow meaning out of all proportion. Of course this means he was lying when he said he wanted to remain friends! Of course this means he hates you! Of course this means you are unloveable and he is trying to destroy your life! Don't hold back when making assumptions. Think Medea. Remember, the more extravagant your assumptions are the farther along you are on your way to becoming a psychotic ex.
Swear you will not call but will maintain the silent dignity of a martyr. Then, fuck martyrdom. Fuck not calling. You have no dignity! You are the psychotic ex!
Harass and accuse. He won't actually pick up, as he'll be busy, or his phone will be out of battery, or he will be sleeping, but, in a way, this is even better than if he did, as it enables you to leave strings of messages of increasing hysteria. Don't be discouraged if harassment and accusation were not your style before. You are a psychotic ex, and they are now, so shriek like the harpy you are.
The next day, tear up with self-pity and self-loathing as you read the email he wrote from work that morning, after he finally got all your emails and messages. Nobly decline the offer to get dinner tonight and go to the concert with his and your friends. Five minutes later, give in.
Behave admirably, if unattractively, throughout dinner. It will be easy. You will be depressed and deflated anyway. Then, smoke drugs, and, at the concert, drink until you can't not dance, shameless as Sheela Na Gig. Just be sure to point your eyes away from couples. Do not see people dancing close, do not see people kissing.
Oh, while at the concert, see some dumb celebrity. In your state of drunken moroninity, decide what you must do is blog this, which, since you do not have internet in your apartment, requires you to go home with ex. This is acceptable, as his roommates are your friends, and they stay up, too, so, really, you are hanging out with them while he just happens, through no fault of yours, to be sleeping in his room down the hall.
However, you will stay up long after your friends have turned in (you've had insomnia all week). Around four in the morning become genuinely, suddenly exhausted. Just worn out. Done in. Outside it is dark and undoubtedly even colder than inside, though that hardly seems possible.
Gently pry open the door to his room, where he is sleeping and naked. Whisper his name till he wakes, startled. Yes, this is creepy, but, on the other hand, you are psychotic. When he asks what's wrong, look down and say something about the cold outside and the exhaustion that's taken hold and meekly ask if you can crash here, in this apartment. When he asks where you would stay, blurt out in one unpunctuated rush that could you please, please sleep in the bed, you promise you will keep all your clothes on and sleep head-to-toe and you are sorry and you are awful but it is so cold and you are so tired, and please? Of course he lets you. He is nice and decent and kind like that, even though you have behaved abominably. And even though he would not mind if you made use of the pillow he is not using and even though he would not mind if you took off your belt or unlatched your bra, keep everything on and hunch, pillowless and upside down, at the far edge, just to be extra pathetic.
You wake up, rattled by dreams, long after everyone else has left for work. Make some coffee. Step out to smoke. Use the internet. Nod off in an arm chair. Wake up. Make more coffee. Grab roommate's copy of Allure and step out the kitchen door onto the back stairwell to smoke.
Pull the door all the way shut because you are being extra-courteous and will not allow even a hint of your smoke to waft in. Immedeately realize your mistake, but smoke, page through the Allure as it becomes increasingly impossible to stifle the panic.
You are locked out, without your shoes, without your phone, without even a book or another goddamned cigarette, and it will be hours before anyone is home, and all you have is that Allure, which is not all that good, even as Allures go.
Consider your options. There is a kitchen window you consider shimmying through, but quickly realize that not only is the window about four feet from the edge of the staircase and two stories high but also is the kind of window that does not open, like a square porthole on the side of the buidling, which suddenly strikes you as especially stupid.
Remember the way in middle school, when you forgot your apartment key, you would get a neighbor to buzz you in, decline their offer to watch TV in their apartment until your parents returned, assuring them that your mother was already home and probably just in the shower and would no doubt hear you now and let you in. Remember how you'd use your plastic library card to jimmy the lock; you'd shoulder your weight against the door and it would give and you were in.
You don't have a plastic library card now or anything like one. What you do have is panic, psychosis and, you notice, a pile of wood chips. Wood chips. Damn you're psychotic. You try slipping wood chips between the door and the frame, as though they were plastic library cards, which they are not.
Now, press on the door. Press harder. Slam your weight into it. Something heaves, cracks and sighs. You see that you've torn part of door frame off of the wall. Consider stopping. Consider your stupidity. Consider how truly, awfully boring that copy of Allure is and throw yourself against it again. Again. Until, on the fourth or fifth try, the door suddenly gives in, at last becoming as unhinged as you are. You stagger back to survey the damage.
Ah, behold! The work of the psychotic ex-girlfriend!
Posted by hissycat at 11:03 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 25, 2005
Self-Pity: My Favorite Sport
For five days now I've been meaning to write a hilarious post about Friday's riotously funny escapade in which I brought about the destruction of ex-boyfriend's kitchen door.
Told with the characteristic wry humor for which I am famed, it would be a winning tale indeed-- just one of the zany mishaps of our endearingly neurotic neurotic encounters on her sometimes rocky, but always hilarious journey through life and love in the big city! I want to spin the story thusly so that it will blink back at me as it reflects off its readers' glossy eyes and I come to believe it that way: a charming story about a quirky, single girl, and not a horror story about a deranged ex-girlfriend, or, worse, a sad story about a deranged girl.
I have trouble mustering up the whatever it is I need to spin the story I envision. I sit down to write and at once find my intentions smothered by the thick dumbness and pathetic obviousness of the elements.
The primitive protection of the emotional endorphins buoyed me through last week with unrealisticly good cheer has worn off. Nearly two weeks have passed since the stunning calamity of getting kicked to the curb by boyfriend and by boss in the space of two days. The acute slap of unrequested freedom, so refreshing at first, is replaced by the persistent throb of lonesomeness, the dull ache of aimlessness, and a sickly dread of the grinding progress of untended days.
"There are people who are just depressed in ways that have nothing to do with their situation and there are people whose lives are genuinely depressing," Alex, in the car with me after helping clear out my office, said. "And then there are people like you who are both."
Posted by hissycat at 10:19 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Crap (Something You May Never Want To Do Again)
A family in Malaysia that had thought their child was hallucinating when she'd talked of a giant snake in their toilet have now confirmed that, in fact, there is a giant snake in their toilet. 8 ft., to be exact.
This so soon after the story about that 10 ft. boa constrctor was found in a toilet in Manchester is creeping me kind of the fuck out.
Posted by hissycat at 09:07 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 24, 2005
Such A Fucking Idiot
I just ate a big, gooey, cheesy quesedilla.
Do you remeber the scene in Angels in America where the dummy at the Mormon Visitors Center becomes animate and speaks to Harper? Remember how Harper asks the dummy how in her experience of the world people change and the dummy responds and says "God splits you down the middle with a jagged thumbnail and grabs hold of your bloody tubes, and they slip to evade his grasp, but he squeezes them tight. And he returns them, mangled and filthy and it's up to you to do the stitching," or something like that?
Well, what the dummy says, that is exactly what happens to my stomach when I consume dairy.
Why do I always fail to make the connection between cheese and milk? Or maybe it's the connection between milk and the intestinal misery the befalls me following its consumption. Somewhere along the line, there is a connection that fails to be made.
Posted by hissycat at 05:44 PM | Comments (780) | TrackBack
October 23, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Yeah, "Una Mujer" is one of my favorite authors.
Posted by hissycat at 03:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 22, 2005
Zombie Virginia Woolf/ The Lion, The Witch, & The Product Placement
Because everyone loves a list, Time magazine put out this list of 100 best novels since 1923 (Why 1923? Seriously, do you know why? Is 1923 a year of some particular importance in bookland? Or is it just an easy way out of having to make a decision one way or the other regarding Ulysses, which was published in 1922?)
My favorites include:
The Sun Also Rises (1926)Author: Ernest Hemingway
"Here's the first half of the book: 'We had dinner and a few drinks. We went to a cafe and talked and had some drinks. We ate dinner and had a few drinks. Dinner. Drinks. More dinner. More drinks. We took a cab here (or there) in Paris and had some drinks, and maybe we danced and flirted and talked sh*t about somebody. More dinner. More drinks. I love you, I hate you, maybe you should come up to my room, no you can't . . . I flipped through the second half of the book a day or two later and saw the words 'dinner' and 'drinks' on nearly every page and figured it wasn't worth the risk."
The Sound and the Fury (1929)Author: William Faulkner
"This book is like an ungrateful girlfriend. You do your best to understand her and get nothing back in return."
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)Author: John Steinbeck
"While the story did have a great moral to go along with it, it was about dirt! Dirt and migrating. Dirt and migrating and more dirt."
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)Author: Thomas Pynchon
"When one contrasts Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five with this book, it's like comparing an Olympic sprinter with an obese man running for the bus with a hot dog in one hand and a soda in the other."
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)Author: Virginia Woolf
"The only good thing to say about this "literary" drivel is that the person responsible, Virginia Woolf, has been dead for quite some time now. Let us pray to God she stays that way."
Oh, and there's also this:
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)Author: C.S. Lewis
"I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for "Turkish Delight," a candy popular in the U.K. The whole point of buying books for my grandkids was to give them a break from advertising, and here (throughout) are ads for this "Turkish Delight"! How much money is this Mr. Lewis getting from the Cadbury's chocolate company anyway? This man must be laughing to the bank."
It's funny, I do remember becoming very, very interested in Turkish Delight after reading the book, though I didn't know what it was. Turkish Delight and hot coacoa, mmmm.
(via bookshelves of doom)
Posted by hissycat at 06:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Real-Time Annoying
I'm in La Onda, which on the weekends turns into a vortex of annoying, collecting the shoppers and strollers and meeting-a-friend-for-coffee-ers that flood the Mission.
On my left--
Girl With Loud, Adenoidal Voice: "I don't like my parents. Not like most people hate their parents. I hate them in a non-psychological way."
On my right--
Loud Stout Man Who Is Causing His Companions Visible Embaressment: "That girl in Vegas was all arghgarargahgra. She'd be perfect for me. I'd like a girlfriend that's like her, but not her."
Traipsing in front of me--
Woman in green clown pants and a wool hat sprouting a rainbow-yarn mohawk that falls half-way down her back. She says nothing. Her wardrobe speaks volumes.
Posted by hissycat at 05:52 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 21, 2005
I Forgot To Mention
Elijah Wood has amazing skin.
Also, my ears are still ringing (just a little bit).
Posted by hissycat at 01:54 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
I Spy A Hobbitt
Like, oh my god, girlfriends, you will totally flip out when I tell you who I saw tonight. Oh. Ma. Gahd. Sit down. No, really sit down. Can you guess? I'll give you three hints:
Elijah Wood! Elijah Wood! Elijah Wood!
I saw Elijah Wood! Like, ahhhhh!
Actually, I really did see Elijah Wood. I went to the Gogol Bordello concert tonight with Caroline, Zuzka, Tess, and Brett (yes, that Brett-- the one I just broke up with).
Brett, Zuzka and I stepped outside at some point towards the end of the lame-ass opener to have a smoke. Zuzka returned in search of a vodka shot, while Brett and I remained for cig #2. About three drags in, he walked by. I looked at Brett for confirmation. Stoned and drunk (did I mention who I was there with?), I couldn't be sure if I was halucinating or what.
"Yes," Brett said, before I could get a word out of my mouth.
"Is--?"
"Yes."
I looked over Elijah Wood, who was leaning against a lamp post, having a smoke, then looked back at Brett. "I just need to be sure," I said, "that you you see--"
"A hobbitt," said Brett. "I see a hobbitt."
We spread the news to our co-horts back inside. Gogol was taking for freaking ever to get on stage. After about forty minutes of waiting, I turned to Brett. "Elijah Wood must be taking a crap or something," I said by way of explanation. But, no. Tess (or someone) spotted him about ten yards behind us. His full denim ensemble was topped by a large yellow cowboy hat, naturally, as no doubt he chose the LARGE YELLOW HAT to avoid calling attention to himself.
Well kids, and here's the shocker. I mean, I know the kid's totally flamingly gay gay gay, but, man oh man, he sure does dance funny.
Oh right, and the concert was totally great.
Posted by hissycat at 01:24 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 20, 2005
Yes, I Know. And I'm Sorry
My posts of late have lackluster and infrequent. In part, this has to do with my lack of a jobby job. Now that I'm unemployed, I am just so busy pacing my yard, smoking cigarettes, staring at my wall, coloring in my "Coloring Book For The Heartbroken" and drinking heavily that I have hardly a spare moment left for blogging. I also have no internet connection in my apartment, which can be a drag.
But the other reason for my reticence is that the thing I'm most inclined to write about right now is something of a private matter. I don't have any illusions about my "dignity" or "decency" or "politeness." In fact, it's not just the illusions I lack but, for the most part, the qualities altogether. Now, in real life, people sometimes mistake my general shyness and uninterestingness and insecurity for some kind of principled reserve. And it is true, I don't generally discuss a great deal of matters generally thought of as personal ones. The reason I don't volunteer stories news information isn't due to ethical considerations, though. The reason is much more dumb and basic than that: it doesn't occur to me to tell anyone, or it doesn't occur to me that anyone would care for me to tell them. I don't know what to say, I'm embaressed by the what I anticipate their response might be. Maybe this aversion to confessions is a reaction against growing up in a house with two psychairtrists as parents. Maybe it has something to do with being a writer, though it would probably be more accurate to say that writing has something to do with it. The need to write, I think, has to do with the profund inarticulateness I feel in life.
Writing for me is an extremely insulated process that locks me further into my skull and keeps me shut off from the world. That is why, after I have been writing for hours or days, I find it difficult to interact normally with people. I stumble away from computer dazed and stunned by the world, my perception as foggy as though I'd just had ECT, my responses dulled and out of synch. But it is also why, when I write, I have no sense of what is or is not appropriate for sharing. I can't really imagine a reader other than myself. This can be trouble. The letters I write tend to be overly forthcoming and embaressing, really. I have trouble remembering that someone else will read what I am writing. This has been a source of trouble and conflict in the past and, indeed, continues to be. This is true for writings other than letters, too. I tend to overlook the boundaries that, in real life, shame and shyness and inarticulateness create. Of course, if I read back what I've written some time after I've written it, I become deeply ashamed. Fortunately (or not) I have developed a very strong case of writer's amnesia. As soon as I've committed something to paper, a letter, especially, I immedeately forget what I wrote. It is a useful mechanism, I find.
It is taking an incredeable force of will this week to rein myself in. The problem is that it takes so much energy to restrain myself from writing on one topic that it becomes difficult to cough up the energy to write on another. Not to worry, though. I'm sure I'll slip and write something very inappropriate and ill-thought-out eventually.
And then I'll be sorry.
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Jesus Christ
Again, with the comment and trackback spam. No, I do not want to click to see how "to-finger-womans-vagina," thank you very much. Nor do I care to visit your page of "piss pics." Thanks, but no thanks.
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October 19, 2005
Letter To My Cat
Dear Gerty,
I love you. You know that. Living with you is the best decision I ever made. You know that, too. But you also know, and I know, too, and you know that I know, and you know that I know you know, that of late some concerns have arisen, as is bound to happen whenever two individuals, no matter how much they love one another, decide to live in a small place together. The conventional wisdom on such matters dictates an open line of honest communication. That, Gerty, is why I am writing this letter to you. I want us to live harmoniously and happily together.
One thing I've been meaning to talk to you about, Gerty, is this business about your new friend. I may never understand myself what it is about that strange, massive, and-- if I may say so-- none too bright, yeti of a cat that attacked my arm that one time that has won your heart after you so ferociously and, yes, callously chased sweet, orange Leo, who wanted nothing more than to peacably observe the pigeons and make lovey eyes at you, out of the courtyard.
But I understand that the heart is a wild thing we choose not the paths it takes. I'm happy for you, Gerty. You've found a creature to be fond of, a creature that is fond of you, someone to lie beside you in the grass, someone to cuddle and spoon you to sleep, someone to bathe you with her tongue, someone to gnaw the dingleberries off of your rump. Good for you. I ask only that you and your friend stop making those god-awful lowing noises at one another for tens of minutes on end. Seriously, what are you doing? It is sweet, if unusual, the way the two hunch down, nose-to-nose and low soulfully at one another. But, please. The sound is less than fetching to human ears. You sound like a drowning peacock, and, frankly, it is embarrassing. Think of the neighbors.
So often does the bathroom become a matter of contention between people who live together, that what I am about to say should not surprise you. Gerty, please stop pooping in the garden. And if you so love the thrill of pooping in the outdoors that to ask you to stop would be asking the impossible, then at least try not to poop right within three feet of the door and directly in front of the chair where I sit when I smoke. It occurs to me as I write this that your poop spot in the garden is the same spot where you like to gift me with dead rats. I don't care for the rats, either, but I understand that because there is no present you would like so much as a rat you presume that I feel the same way. You are wrong. But I understand the sentiment that motivates you. But Gerty, the poop? What's with the poop?
I know that when you howl at the garden door it means you want me to let you out. Believe me, I know, and there is no need to jump all over the coffee table once you see me opening the door. I'd had a hard enough week before you slapped the beer bottle with your tail, sending waterlogged cigarette butts and foul, foul liquid all over the room, that only made it that much worse. And when I tell you it's not time for you to go out, please respect that. Do not, for instance, howl at the door at five in the morning when sleep is at long last tentatively extending her mercies. And please don't jump on my desk and try to shove yourself between the window and the venetian blinds. Not only does that cause a terrible racket but also breaks the blinds.
And while we are on the subject of the great outdoors, there is something else I've been wondering. When you run towards the pigeons that perch on the windowsill of the crazy neighbor that feeds them, you might consider not meowing as you hurtle towards them. That's how they know you're coming. That's why they fly away. I think you know that, too. After all, you do not meow at the rats as you catch them. I might think you were trying to be the pigeons' friend except for that gleam in your eye, that gleam that says, "I want to eat you." Oh, and next time you are considering jumping up towards the windowsill, do try and keep in mind you are missing a leg. You will not make the jump. You will, instead, come crashing down through the shrubbery with a panic stricken look in your eye, and the pigeons will blink down at you mockingly and not even ruffle their feathers.
In fact, it would mean a lot to me if you would make a general rule of calculating your lack of leg when planning your jumps. I know that when you fail to clear a jump to the desk and go sliding back down the side, hooking with desperation whatever you little claws can, you don't mean to bring down the foot high stack of papers with you, splaying them all over my floor, but with a little more forethought, we could avoid these situations altogether.
Love,
Joanna
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October 18, 2005
OH FUCK
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. The papers handed over to the White House include a record of her opposing abortion. It's not a surprise, per se. But still: fuck.
On the other hand, perhaps it is just as well that any illusions that Miers could be alright are drying up.
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My Bookjacket Photo
After leaving La Onda last evening, I went home and pondered the wisdom of Agent 007's advice.
I have come to the conclusion that, as a young, unknown with neither book deal nor agent, the only reasonable thing for me to do was to take a sample head-shot. That way, anyone who is interested can know, right off the bat, whether my face is pretty enough to be published.
I took this photo first. As you can see, I have my glasses on in this photo. My glasses not only enable me to see but also, I like to think, lend me a certain air of intellectual gravitas, bestow upon my visage a certain boyish, bookish charm a la Ira Glass, Jonathon Lethem or any of the number of other admired, bookish and bespectacled men.
Then I remembered the Agent's warning that "the standard is higher if you're a woman," and that no one likes a "bespectacled" and "tweedy" girl scribe. I decided to take another photograph, this time removing my glasses first. Here, you can see how I Iook without my glasses on.
As the great Ms. Parker once noted, literary agents don't make passes at girls who wear glasses. Or something like that.
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October 17, 2005
Why, Yes Virginia, There Is Bullshit, Sexism, And Sexist Bullshit In The Publishing Industry
Wow, thanks, for the heads up, Agent 007! As a young, scribbling female, I appreciate all the help, advice and encouragement I can get. I'm so relieved to find confirmation for what I always suspected was true:
Men can look grizzled and weathered and still look cool with the right lighting and scene. Think Jim Harrison and Charles Frazier.Women, on the other hand, have to try harder.
I was going to work on an article this afternoon, but on second thought I think my time would be better spent getting my hair blown out. See, I have learned from this parable:
Editor 007 preempts a fantastic manuscript of heartbreak and renewal. She loves it more than any book she's ever published, even though the author is a thorn in her side. The cover is amazing--completely groundbreaking and attention-grabbing from 30 feet away. The early reviews are universally great. But when the author stops by to meet the editor several months before the book is released, she is disheveled. Her eyeliner is an inch wide. Her hair is a mass of black, swirling strands. A couple of weeks later when the publicity director asks if Editor 007 has any idea what the author looks like, she has to say, "Radio."
You know, when I am working intensely on something, I tend to become dissheveled, too. But in the future, I will be sure to go to bed by ten in order to get my beauty sleep (nothing worse than puffy eyes!) instead of staying up till dawn finding the words I want to mean.
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My Imaginary Testicles
Note: I started this entry last week, or maybe even the week before. In any case, I started it before the Bad Things happened. It is somewhat less timely now, as the New Yorker story is likely no longer available online. Oh well.
I highly, highly recommend the Jeffrey Eugenides shorty story, Early Music that ran in this last week's New Yorker. It is a beautiful, moving story. I love Eugenides.
The last time I read a story by Eugenides in the New Yorker must have been in 2001 or 2002 because it was before the publication of Middlesex. The story was, in fact, an excerpt from Middlesex, the episode involving Cal and the Object. Cal, who is in secret teenage love with the Object, has sex with the Object's brother and is hit by a tractor, the result of which is the discovery of hidden testicles.
After putting the story down, I started imagining what it would be like to suddenly discover a secret testicle. I started to imagine myself in Cal's position (such are my identifying-with-the-protagonist ways). What would I do if I had an undescended testicle? Would I, like Cal, change my identity and live out my life as a man? Would I have surgery? Wouldn't surgery send the wrong message, politically? How would I explain this to dates? Would I have to tell my friends? Would it help me with a book deal?
Now, I had no reason to suspect I might actually have hidden testicles. Unlike Cal, I had had sex without searing pain. I had been examined by a gynecologist. And I had never noticed any, um, lumps on my own. But I'm crazy and live too much inside my own head. I became totally preoccupied with my imaginary testicles. I made all sorts of plans for how to live my life in the aftermath of their inevitable enterance. I mean, I was convinced that I had secret testicles. Sure, there'd been no sign-- yet. It was only a matter of time.
I confessed my fears to my roommate a few days before a bad fall off my bike that left me with stitches in my bottom lip and evil bruises. One bruise in particular, on the inner side of my knee, took on a life of its own. A lump the size of a , yes, of a tesiticle congealed under the purple skin. The lump had a density and consistency unnervingily like those of, yes, a testicle. I made my roommate touch it. "Doesn't it feel like a testicle is growing out of my leg?" She totally agreed.
"Your undescended testicle totally descended," she said. "To your knee."
"I told you so."
Hence, her nickname for me:
Testicle "Knees" Undisclosed-Surname
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October 16, 2005
I Touched The Wrists Of Famous People
And not the kind of celebrity whose wrist might give me herpes, either.
Last night, at the Litquake party I got to slap paper wristbands on the wrists of really cool writer people. Actually, as it turns out, I'm an absolutely terrible wrist-bander. I must have given about 60 people unrequested forearm waxings, which was kind of, you know, awkward. And I'm not very fast at it, either, and the traffic kept bottlenecking, which made me only more flustered. But I did manage to reveal my identity to Stephen Elliot, who was very, very nice.
"Hi, I'm the girl that wrote about your shirt." He looked a little confused, but then he got it. "Oh, oh. You."
"Yeah, I'm sorry."
"No, that's ok, it was really funny. I'd never felt that famous before. But you know, you could have just come over and said hello."
"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry," I squeaked out. Then he patted my shoulder and moved along and I went back to banding. I saw him again, later in the night, after my shift had ended. He was standing near the bar drinking from what, judging from the elegant frosted glass bottle it was in, appeared to be cologne but which more likely was just water. I really wanted to go up and say something like, "I'm sorry I'm so creepy. I don't mean to be creepy. But, I do really, really like your stories." But of course I was way too shy. And creepy.
Oh, and some dude was wearing a t-shirt that said "I am JT Leroy," which totally made me giggle.
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Just Checking
You know when you wake up at five in the afternoon, and your hand is on your genitals and you wonder, 'Wait, when did I take my panties off? And Why?' And then you try to find your panties and as you lift your hand away from your bits to have a feel around and you realize something is binding your hand down, and then you realize that you are wearing your panties, you just shoved your hand into your underpants before you fell asleep and left it there, and then everything makes sense? So, when that happens to you-- What? Oh, that never happens to you. Yeah, me either.
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October 15, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Yes, I'm one day early, but I'm not quite up to posting anything written yet.
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October 14, 2005
I'm A Man, Not A Lesbian
Best Craigslist post ever:
Dear Paula-I want you to know you're very special to me, but I have a confession to make. I'm not really a woman. Yes, that's right. I know it's horrible, but you're in love with a man.
You must have known it, in your heart. Didn't you wonder about the ferocious leg stubble? The deep voice? The five o'clock shadow? The consuming interest in sports? The chest hair and, perhaps most telling of all, the fact that I always wanted to be the bus-driver? Honey, baby, sugar-melons...what you felt was original equipment, not plastic. Does that make it any less magical? Not to me. I could tell you liked it by the way you yelled and wiggled.
I hope we can get past this somehow. I really do care for you. I want you to know that in my heart I'm a woman, and never more so than when I'm with you. Your Donna is still right here, in this body. Does it matter what's on the outside? Does it really matter?
Ask yourself this. If I wasn't a lesbian, meaning you, and you were, meaning me, and I, meaning you, didn't even have a dog, which is how we met in the marina this past spring, meaning us, not you and the dog, when your frisbee hit me in the balls, would it matter at all which one of us was a man, even if both of us were? And the dog is a male anyway, you can love him, why not me? I mean not why can't I love the dog. I do, he just doesn't like me because of the thing with the squeaky mouse and the hot plate. Do you see what I'm driving at here?
Call me, sugar-melons
Don(na)
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Authors Are So Poorly Dressed
Thanks to a friend, and a friend of a friend, I will be working the LitQuake party on Saturday. No, not that kind of workin' it; I mean the kind of working it that involves stamping hands at the door and not getting paid. But still. I'm very excited. There will be a lot of really cool authors. Anyway, I recently received a follow-up email letting me know where to go, when to go there, and, amusingly what to wear:
Wear whatever you would like, but something presentable. I will probably wear jeans and a nice shirt, a jacket, comfy but dressy shoes, remember, these are writers with no inherent style :)
It kind of warms my heart that while the right coast writers are giving the impression of stepping it up bougie-style*, that the writers in SF, at least, remain incurable slobs.
*That said, I can testify that journalists in NY, at least, still show up places looking like they just rose from a nap in a bush. I interned in New York bureau of a large international paper a few years ago, and I worked under the head of PR (not exactly a typical PR official, as she sat on the editorial floor and acted as a kind of liason between the journalists and 1) other media outlets and 2) the biznazz people on the business floor), part of whose job it was to make the journalists presentable for TV appearances. I think the only aspect of her job I ever heard her complain about was how impereable the journalists were to any kind of style advice she gave them. She actually had to go and buy appropriate, fitting shirts for some of them. Before they were allowed to step into the broadcating space, she would have to re-tie their ties, comb their hair, and sometimes make them change into a different shirt if the one they were wearing happened to be badly wrinkled or stained. These were really brilliant, accomplished professional journalists who did not know how to comb their hair. Actually, you know, I kind of respect that.
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October 13, 2005
Bet You Didn't Know.
The Shining is the feel-good movie of the year.
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More Didion
The Year Of Magical Thinking has just been named a finalist for the National Book Award.
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Joan Didion On Fresh Air
If you are in the Bay Area, KQED broadcasts Fresh Air at one and again at seven. Or, you can listen to it here.
The Year Of Magical Thinking, by the way, is-- well, I can't think of an adequate word. It is exquisite. It, like other books of her, has the quality to render me dumbly mute. I've been meaning to write about it, but have had trouble starting. I will write about it, I don't know when, because I'll want and have to. But I'd like to sit with it in silence for a little bit longer.
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Jokes
Set-up:
What is funnier(/ sadder) than a depressed, lonely person whose beloved cat has died?
Punchline:
A depressed, lonely person whose cat has died and whose beloved boyfriend has left (dumped) her.
Set-up:
What is funnier(/ sadder) than a depressed, lonely person whose cat died and whose boyfriend broke up with her?
Punchline:
A depressed and lonely person whose cat has died, whose boyfriend has left her, and whose boss has just given her (something like) her walking papers.
Set-up:
What is funnier(/ sadder) than a depressed, lonely person whose cat has died, whose boyfriend has left her, and who is about to be unemployed?
Punchline:
Nothing.
And who is sadder than her?
No one.
I live in San Francisco, should you want to hire me.
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Hello, Cruel World
I'm single.
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October 12, 2005
Prophecy Fulfilled
The bad things have happened. I am coping.
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Insomnia
For the third night in the row I am unable to sleep. Last night I couldn't close my eyes until after six, and then, only after I'd polished off a tumbler glass of whiskey. Tonight I drank half a bottle of Kahlua Arvel left here, but it hasn't worked. I'm at Brett's place, and I kind of want to die. I drove here at four am because I had not heard from him all day and I felt sick and could not sleep and did not know what else to do. I still can't sleep, and I can't find any pills, and I left my copy of The Year Of Magical Thinking, which I am engrossed in, at home.
I didn't go to work yesterday because I knew if I tried driving I would crash the car. I don't see how I can not go into work today. I also don't see how I can. It is nearing six. I'm rocking myself by the window. I'm waiting for the bad things I know are going to happen.
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October 11, 2005
Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay
Yeah, duh, Harriet Miers is gay. The NYTimes yesterday reported than Ms. Miers is on intimate terms with Condilezzie Rice:
For much of the past five years, Ms. Miers, 60, has been a close friend not only of Ms. Veneman but of Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state. Schedules permitting, the three have met for what people still call girls' nights out in Washington.
Girls night out, indeed:
"There's a lot of girl talk," said a friend of Ms. Miers and Ms. Rice, who asked not to be named because she did not want to be identified discussing the women's personal lives. "It's about life, not business."
Someone should really tell them, because I don't think they got the memo, that today is National Coming Out Day.
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October 10, 2005
The Sober Writer: A Sign Of The Times; and, An Appeal To Dave Eggers
Upon arriving at work this morning I was delighted to find in my inbox an email from my dear friend Ameeth directing me to this NYTimes article about the growing trend of members-only writing centers in New York. These exclusive cozies, apparently, are popping up faster than pustules on the member of Paris Hilton's latest conquest. Accompanying the link was a message:
Pathetic. I hate new york. stab stab stab stab
Though I love that city of mine with all my filthy heart, I admit to on more than one occaision been known to sputter with far less eloquence than he sentiments of a similair nature. I appreciate as much as the next New Yorker the chance to rag on the "cool people" and "writers" and other boroughlings whose lives and successes I wish I had. (For the record, I am allowed to say offensive things about New York, for I am of New York, much like Woody Allen may say offensive things about the Jews, for he is of the Jews. If Ameeth had not lived in Brooklyn the past two years, earning his right to resent and detest every white boy with bed-raggled hair in Williamsburg, I would have not taken his comments in such good stride. Lest you think his Brooklyn years were not enough, rest assured he also attended Brown, which, in certain crucial ways, bears a more than passing resemblance to Brooklyn.)
My reaction to the article was twofold. As I'm always keen on a chance to vituperate any writer more successful than I (in this regard, my utter lack of success is truly a blessing, as I have a virtually infinite number of targets onto whom whom to direct my groundless ire), you can imagine how I must have snorted with gleeful scorn to read statements such as this:
"The concept of writers as drunken Hemingwayesque malcontents traveling the globe is over," Ms. Cecil said. "They see it as a job now, and they see themselves not as inspired alcoholics, or depressive psychopaths alone in a tenement. It's more mainstream. It's good kids going to M.F.A. programs, then looking for a place to find the kind of writerly community they had in grad school."
Fucking rat shit good kids! Fucking bitchy bitch fuck fart M.F.A. programs! Jesus fucking mainstream! Ugly fucking whore cock grad school! Somewhere, I know, Fran Lebowitz is rolling around atop her unmade pull-out couch, horrified to read that the belles lettres have sunk so low as to fall to the hands of the sober. If these sober, ambitious, M.F.A.-weilding goody goodies are the writers of the future, than I am frightened for what the future holds. If writers can't be lovable alcholoic malcontents, I ask you, who can? Or, to put it another way-- and this is where it really hurts-- if depressive, alcoholic, deranged psychopaths who live alone in filthy tenement apartments, who have only a cat and a bottle of gin for love, can't be writers, what can I be? People, I am running out of options. An unreliable malcontent just can't catch a break these days.
Oh, and I almost threw up when the doyenne of Paragraph compared her quill club to a gym:
Ms. Parisi compares writers' rooms to gyms. In both, a large group of people share the same equipment. And, paying for membership helps writers take their commitment to writing seriously, she said, and gets them "off of the couch" and onto the literary StairMaster. . . And like exercise buffs, the writers who use these spaces need to be self-motivated and disciplined.
Egads-- "literary" and "StairMaster" are two words that do not belong together! Oh, somebody say a prayer to Jean Rhys, beg pardon from Oscar Wilde! Dorothy Parker weeps angel's tears at the thought that "writers" have become like "excercise buffs." With things such as they are one can hardly summon up the appropriate degree of horror at the lack of sexual goings-ons amongst members. It is a grim truth that when alcoholism leaves, it takes sexual debauchery with it.
And yet-- and yet-- And yet there is the other fold of my twofold reaction, which is this: I want to be let in the club. One writer quoted describes the communality of working in one these spaces as "parallel play, like toddlers in a sandbox." How delightful, I say, how appealing! That is perfect for me! I loathe human interaction and frighten myself! I need a place to go that is full of people who don't expect me to speak or smile back! "When you write at home, there's a lot of distraction. . . You want to go clean out the fridge, or tweeze your eyebrows," or, if you are me, pick your toes, "but when you go to a space to write, that's what you do." All that unholy Swedish furniture and track lighting would not only increase my productivity but impart a clean, modern birghtness and simplicity to every aspect of my life, I am sure of it.
So please, Dave Eggers, if you are listening, when you or yours decide open up one of these writers' clubs in SF-- and I know you will, because that's just the sort of thing you would do-- please, please let me in. I am sure you could find room for one alcoholic malcontent. I can be the club's kitschy, fashionably-obslete mascot. I'll sit at the door in my fashoinably-obsolete get-up of sweat-stained t-shirts, jeans I picked up off the floor, and underwear that should have been changed two days ago, I'll sit there with my fashionably-obsolete accessoriess: a copy of Ulysses and a bottle gin and let my forehead crash noisily onto a typewriter. Everyone will look up with an expression of ironic bemusement. I will be the source of much amusement! You clever young upstarts can laugh and laugh as I barf through the tears and I will oblige and drink all the more. I will blink back at you with my reddened psychotic eyes and I will not know whether your hearty laughs are ironic or sincere. And you will love me.
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Amuse Yourself
CronyJobs.com is hiring.
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Gross
I was not aware trackback spam existed until today, but exist it does, and it is piled up here today. I just deleted forty trackback pings for "horse sex," "incest pics," and the like.
Anyone have a prophylactic approach to warding this shit off that they would like to recommend?
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October 09, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
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October 08, 2005
Are They Being Cute?
This is just getting ridiculous.
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Orange Leo
I got the key to my apartment in April, when I was still down at Stanford, finishing my thesis. The apartment happened very suddenly, and although I'd decided in theory that I wanted to live by myself, the reality of sleeping alone after eight months of sharing a bed with Brett every night, and of staying by myself in a studio apartment after three years within shouting distance of Alex and Tamara, was quietly terrifying. At first I refused to stay in the city unless Brett stayed with me, but while I was doing the lonely work of finishing a thesis, Brett still had classes as well as commitments to the peer-counseling center where he worked. I could work properly only in my studio, where there ws a desk, a chair and a mattress Brett dragged in from the street and nothing else, as my dorm room had become too filthy, Brett's place was too distracting. I had to start staying in the city alone.
This was before I got Gerty the cat. Brett flew home to Denver for Passover the second weekend after I got my key, so I steeled myself for the occaision by loading into my car a space heater, several changes of underwear, heavy sweaters, a sweaty old t-shirt that stinking of Brett I planned to pull over my nose like a mask of laudanum to sleep in, the blanket from Brett's bed, also in need of a washing, whisky, valium, my journal and the four stuffed animals we own between us: Doggy and Amabunny (mine) and Shtasi and Cupholder, Brett's otters.
I worked as late as I could so as to avoid the terrifying prospect of sleeping. I smoked cigarettes and jumped in my skin at the slightest noise. No longer capable of propping myself upright, I'd taken my laptop onto the mattress, intent on typing myself into a coma via exhaustion or valium, whichever I gave into first. I saw the light spot of nose, the point of ears in a bottom pane of the courtyard-facing door. A cat.
Although it was well past any hour a reasonable person would come to the phone, even in the Rocky time zone, I called Brett's voicemail and left a message. "I have exciting news," I said, "call me back. It's not an emergency, but call me back. I have exciting news."
I had seen the big orange cat once before. It was the night after I'd signed my lease, when Brett and I were going to stay in my apartment for the first time. We were pulling up to the curb and I saw the cat come trotting up the street. I jumped out and approached the cat in a twisted, hunched down run, my arms extended. The cat had scampered off. I scampered after until it dissappeared behind the bars of a gate.
I went outside to have a cigarette and pursue the cat. He was friendly, this time. Cautious at first, he was soon weaving between my calves. He thumped back on the ground for a petting.
I wanted to lure the cat in, so I opened a can of tuna. The cat came in, but protested louldy if I so much as touched the doorknob, so I piled on more sweaters and let the brittle wet wind snuff out the warmth from the space heater and let the cat sniff out the apartment. While scrathing his neck, I examined the heart-shaped tag. His name was Leo, he belonged to Adobe Books around the corner, and because there was already one Leo cat in my life (a big white and gray boy that lives in my parents' home) I started thinking of him as Orange Leo. Eventually, the cat finished his tuna and went away and I, fully dressed, collapsed on the mattress, clutching all four stuffed animals to my middle and the Brett-stinking shirt spread over my pillow, calmed beyond the need for valium by the visit from the curious orange cat.
Orange Leo returned the next night, and I gave him more tuna. The following night, he relaxed enough to nap on the green armchair I'd purchased that day. He didn't protest when I closed and locked the garden door, only blinked at me with his sleepy green eyes, then buried his face under his tail