April 12, 2006
Punk Rock Librarian
This article from the NYT is brimming with my favorites: lesbians, archives, librarians, low-brow ephemera. Barnard librarian Jenna Freedman, who is quite clearly the most awesome person on earth, has spearheaded the college's scholarly collection and new digital catalogue of zines. You can check out what Barnard has online here.
Posted by hissycat at 12:01 AM | Comments (27)
March 22, 2006
Patently Ridiculous? Copyright it is!
From today's NYTimes editorial on patent law reform:
Our nation's founders considered intellectual property important enough to include in the Constitution, but did not establish the system for the sake of the inventor. It exists for the sake of society, or, as it says in the Constitution, "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts."
Oh my freaking god, it's an honest-to-god miracle that the principle of the common good is being mentioned in an article about intellectual property, so thanks, Gray Lady, for bringing this up in regards to patent law.
But whenever the topic is copyright law why-- oh, for the sake of sick orphan kittens-- does no mainstream newsource seem capable of adding two and two to get to the forehead-smackingly, air-punchingly obvious point that copyright laws can and in fact have become stifling and not in the interest of society? Yargh, I say to ye. Yargh.
Posted by hissycat at 03:32 AM | Comments (87)
March 20, 2006
Selling Out: A Rambly Late Post
No, really, it's just my new haircut that makes the page look different to you. No? Ok, look. I'm not crazy about the new look either, and yes, I know, advertising's the devil's trade. It's just that I'm just kind of, well-- comment vous dites? ah, oui!-- poor. I'm not as indigent as I was a couple of months ago when I was out of work, but I'm still just barely scraping by, and things are about to get even tighter.
No, I'm not about to get fired again. Well, at least I hope not. God, I hope not. That would blow. I actually like the work I'm doing-- it's researchy work that I can do from home on my own schedule. Its not in a field I have intention of hoeing-- or whatever it is one does, metaphorically, in one's metaphoric field-- but that's ok. I dig up general-interest interesting info, which is pleasing enough in itself, and besides, I'm not interested in a jobby job job, if you know what I mean. Like, a career-track job. I just want work that will fund my writing time-- something that isn't so draining and time-consuming that I just want to smoke drugs and die when the I clock out. If I can use the time to learn about a world I don't spend a whole lot of time engaged with, all the better. Lately I have been under pressure from my employers to get the project done faster, which means working more hours. It's been cutting into my sleeping time (I'm too stupid/ stubborn to give up my writing time) and stressing me out. I'm going to have to step up and ask to cut back my hours. I hate to do this because I 1) feel like a shmoo and 2) need the money. But on the other hand, this was just the kind of job one takes to support things like writing and if it's stressing me out and cutting into my work time, then the situation probably needs to be reevaluated.
Oh, and writing. This is the best part of my life right now. I mean it always is-- I think this is how I know I'm going to always have to be writing. I just feel so useless when I'm not doing it. I'm so anxious all the time, worrying that I ought to be somewhere else, spending the time differently, living my life in a better way. When I'm writing well it's like I'm just doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's just what I'm supposed to be doing (even when it's not. . . like, for instance, now. I should be working. Or sleeping. Or washing dishes.). I can't think of another activity I feel that way about.
Anyway, I've sort of gearing up to do more freelance writing over-- well, a long time-- but in the last month or so, I'd say steam has been gathering. That's another reason I want to cut back on my work hours. I know I was all about grad school last month. I still am, kind of. But I'm not going to be ready to apply until 2007 at the earliest. And I took my GREs in 2003 (don't ask)-- ha ha I am so going to have to take those again. It's not that I'm having any, like, material success as a writer. God, no. Nothing like that. Don't get the wrong idea. This is more just about how much time I'm doing to get my work out and how much I am putting out there and just being serious and committed and grown-up in the way I approach my work.
So in the meantime, I have bills to pay. If you happen to be planning on signing up for DSL with Speakeasy as your ISP (I actually do recommend them, esp. if you live in San Francisco and your alternative is crappy SBC), you can do me a kindness by clicking the Speakeasy button at the bottom of the page or telling them the refferal code. I'll get a credit towards my DSL. And if you happen to be signing up, or thinking about signing up for Backpack, it'd be neat if you'd use me as your referral. I spend $9 a month to keep my shit organized on that site, so a credit towards future bills would be cool, if it's no trouble to you and you happen to be signing up anyway. If I suddenly become filthy-- or even scuzzily-- rich I'll take down the ads.
I tried to make the ads as unobnoxious as possible, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them. Also, tell me if you have any issues in browsers other than Safari, since I'm lazy as hell and don't bother to check. Or, if you just feel like calling me a money-grubbing Jew, greedy whore, etc., feel free.
Posted by hissycat at 03:09 AM | Comments (6)
March 13, 2006
Meta-Kittenian Experimental Video Art
How do you make the best funny cats in the world even better?
More kittens!
Oh man, the layers of catness that are going on right now are totally blowing my brain. It's too much. Too much. It's like, all those cats. And then that, that little one. And here I am watching the video with my cat. Oh, wow. I just had some kind of small stroke in my brain. Seriously, call an ambulance. My IQ is dropping by the second. I cannot. . . stop. . . watching. . . need. . .more. . . kittens . . .drool. . .
Posted by hissycat at 12:55 AM | Comments (3)
February 16, 2006
Steve's Sad Stories About Animals
True:
When Steve was growing up, his family had a dog named Rapunzel-- 'Punzie' for short-- who, as you can guess, was so called for the length of her hair. Sadly for Punzie, said hair had a way of announcing itself in flourishes all over the upholstery, eventually leading to Steve's mother banishing Punzie to the yard. There poor Rapunzel lived out the rest of her doggy days in exile due to the very attribute for which she was named.
So sad!
True:
Steve's sister and brother-in-law had a pet piranha named Killer. Their pet cat ate it.
So hilarious recockulous redonkulous absurd sad!
Posted by hissycat at 11:49 AM | Comments (4)
December 04, 2005
I Am Horribly Depressed
I like otters.
Posted by hissycat at 10:21 PM | Comments (2)
November 29, 2005
I Want One
Can we please bonsai this panda to make it adorable and apartment-seized forever?
Posted by hissycat at 08:11 PM | Comments (12)
November 25, 2005
A Well-Spent Thanksgiving
Zuzka came by with coffee yesterday morning around 9:30 to wake me and take me back to her apartment for turkey-making, which, given the hellish night I'd just had (two Xanax and still no sleep), I was very grateful for.
I was a little Bree Van De Campy yesterday, but I had to keep busy-- keep chopping, keep mashing, keep basting, keep checking-- in order to keep my head above water. I took another Xanax and let Desperate Housewives play in the background while I scurried around the kitchen. When Alex woke up, around noon, drinking began. It went on until 4am, when Alex, Zuzka, and I finally went to bed.
It was a successful Thanksgiving, I think. The turkey turned out well, we ate like pigs, and Meg brought over two delicious homemade pies and Tess-- the only person I know who has Cuisinart-type appliances in her kitchen-- provided the whipped cream. We ate and drank ourselves into diabetic comas and passed out in front of more Desperate Housewives. Once, I had to excuse myself to go into the pantry by myself and feel sad for a while, but later I drank more and Zuzka and Alex started making me laugh, and I had a very fun night.
I don't feel competatent right now. I'll try to write something better later.
Posted by hissycat at 07:22 PM | Comments (8)
November 24, 2005
Carniverous
All that Xanax-- I mean, tryptophan-- sure has made me sleepy. My fingers don't want to type. Here are some photos instead.
Yeah, I cooked that turkey. Most successful thing I've done in months.
Posted by hissycat at 10:29 PM | Comments (10)
November 20, 2005
Neologisms
urbanal | 'er'be'nål |
adj.
so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring in the context, geography, or characteristic of a city: yet another urbanal 'street art' show in a small gallery space.
DERIVATIVES
urbanality noun (pl. -ties)
urbanally adverb
ORIGIN some bar in the Lower Haight on a Saturday night, early 21st cent. (first used by famed drunkards Joanna and Katie to describe the recurring and predictable dilemma of not being able to discern sexual orientation from the dress or manners of the 'hipsters' at certain 'cool' bars, all too often leading to predictably awkward scenarios): from English, from the combination of urban and banal; ultimately of Alcoholic origin and containing sniggering associations with urbane.
procrasturbate | pre'kraste'er'båt |
verb [intrans.]
stimulate one's own genitals in order to delay or postpone action; put off doing something by looking at pornography and/ or playing with one's own genitals: I wasted half the day procrasturbating when I should have been finishing up those book reviews.
DERIVATIVES
procrasturbation noun
procrasturbator noun
procrasturbatory adjective
ORIGIN Lindsay's dorm room, early 21st century.: from English masturbate in combination with procrastinate; ultimately of Marijuana and Red Bull-addled origin.
Posted by hissycat at 06:17 PM | Comments (8597)
November 16, 2005
Oh, See!
Seems I'm not the only one that was ticked off when Teresa didn't abort on the O.C.
Posted by hissycat at 12:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 12, 2005
Update: Mother Still Here
No time to write, so instead I leave you with a paperback of the week (that's the second in two days! Oboy!):
Also, this:
And promises of a story tomorrow.
Posted by hissycat at 11:36 AM | Comments (8189) | TrackBack
November 11, 2005
Even Though I'm Terrified Of Clowns
For the record, I really, really, really want the Moscow Cat Circus to come to San Francisco.
Posted by hissycat at 09:08 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
November 08, 2005
It's Rainy And Gray In San Francisco Today
Posted by hissycat at 05:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 07, 2005
Why I Love Susie Bright
Susie Bright's respone to Scooter Libby's dirty novel is, in a word, fabulous:
To start with, Scooter could use a good spanking with a hardcover edition of Strunk & White's Elements of Style. His most grievous challenge lies in composition and command of the English language.
She then takes him to task for his abyssmally unerotic erotica, line by line, like the sassy editrix she is.
I'm piss poor at the moment, but if anyone would like to buy me a copy of Susie Bright's book How To Write a Dirty Story I will promise to put it to good use and take all Ms. Bright's advice to heart.
Oh, Susie Bright! She rox my sox!
Posted by hissycat at 05:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 06, 2005
Cute Little Lion Cubs
Generally, I try to restrain myself when it comes to posting cute pictures of wee little cute little furry little animals, but dammit, if it's not too silly for BitchPhD to post, it sure as hell is not too silly for me.
More pictures of the baby big cats, born at the Forth Worth zoo this Septamber, here and here.
Posted by hissycat at 03:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2005
I Know, I Know, I Know
I've been really lame about posting lately. I wish I could say it is because I've been really busy. It sure feels as if I have been really busy. However, I have no idea what I've been doing. I do know, though, that I have been doing it on an extremely odd schedule, and that's part of the problem. I'm in a really bad cycle of sleeping until four in the afternoon and staying up till seven or eight in the morning. It's a really difficult habit to break, one that requires more Valium than I currently have access to. I just get so anxious at night, then depression comes with the dawn, and floors me all day. This is my life. I don't even fight it.
I'm grossly behind on my correspondances. If you have emailed me in the past month and not heard back, do not doubt my tender affection, dear sweet Hissy Kittens-- I will reply! Eventually.
I am convinced that if only my selfish neighbors would not password-protect their wireless, I would be a model of modern virtue and efficiency. Alas, I am too unemployed to pay for internest myself, and, more to the point, it is exceedingly difficult to get a customer service to talk to me at the only hour I am motivated enough to call one, which is four in the morning.
I've been writing: essays, articles, queries, pitches, and, because it is NaNoWriMo, a crappy, trashy novel. For an instant I considered posting it as I wrote it, but then I came to my senses and decided to spare us both the embaressment. Or, to be more precise, to save myself the embaressment while denying you the pleasure of mocking relentlessly my cheap and inadequate prose.
And last night (well, the day, really) I had the most terrifying dream about zombie clones. That has nothing to do with anything, but, oh my, was it strange. Some other time I'll tell you.
I leave you with a promise to do better and post something for real here tomorrow. I'm going to scurry back to hovel now. I have a Very Important Phone Call to make.
Posted by hissycat at 07:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2005
Dance Of The Seven Veils
I, Salome, regarding with goofy-eyed lust the head of John the Baptist, which has just been presented to me, as per my request, on a silver platter.
Posted by hissycat at 03:30 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
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 18, 2005
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.
Posted by hissycat at 01:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 03, 2005
The Jews for Jesus High Holy Services, However, Are Free
Joanna: ooh, there's sha'ar zahav services on 16th & delores. even i would go to that. for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender jews.
but it costs buttloads of money
so never mind
the jews for jesus service, however, is free
Brett: haha
how much is sha'ar zahav>
Joanna: $100
brought to you by gTalk
Posted by hissycat at 02:42 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 28, 2005
My Sick Day
My sick day was given over largely to particpitating in a very involved debate at Twisty's about, among other things, mysoginy and corset piercings. I may post further/ revised/ better articulated thoughts on the topic later this week. Then again, I may not.
I still want that tattoo, though I'm not unaware of the irony that as my surface area expands, my choice of locales affording an attractive backdrop for a tattoo shrinks. I am gaining weight.
Posted by hissycat at 11:52 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
September 26, 2005
Drinking In A Hotel Bar
Last night I became exactly the kind of grown-up I always hoped I would grow up to be.
The kind that gets drunk in a hotel bar on a Sunday night and dances to synthesized renditions of Burt Bacharach songs in a skirt that is short enough to make me look like a hotel bar hooker.
Yesterday, after the Folsom Street Fair (which taught me that there are not enough public spankings or bound people accepting large dildos up their asses in the world to make large, organized events not boring), the Tess, the Luke, the Brett, the Ameeth, and I took a cab to the Fairmont hotel where we were meeting Molly and her Dad at the Tonga room in the Fairmont Hotel. We were promised a Korean woman in a boat playing Missy Elliot on a keyboard while the boat motored around the bar. We were not dissappointed.
We should have perhaps taken it as an omen for the rest of the night that the cab we unknowingly climbed into was-- in the driver's words-- "an awesome disco cab." On the dash were half a dozen Chinese dragon bobble-heads angrily bobbing their heads to the blaring 50-cent. There was speculation that the entire trunk of the cab had been turned into a sub-woofer. I believe it. Among the bobble-headed dragons on the dash were, inexplicably, three or four cat miniatures made of animal fur and glass eyes and little rattan baskets. In the space between the back seat headrests and the rear window pane were a cabaret line of colored spotlights. A star made of blinking Christmas-tree lights adorned the ceiling and there was a multi-colored discoball in the center of the cab. Oh, and a TV screen showing Lord of the Rings.
Wedged as I was soundly between lovely, warm bodies in the backseat (four of us were smooshed it), I was largely sheilded from the aggressive rattling and jostling of the car, though those sitting next to doors testified to being slammed around quite a lot, and I believe it. At one point, shooting down a side street the tires shrilled as we came to a sudden halt. A German Shepard was passing by.
The car once again came to a dead halt (this time in the middle of traffic). A cab going in the opposite direction had stopped and running out of that cab, a hunchback waddlyran over to the driver's window, waving a fat stack of bills. "I have three hundred! I have three hundred!" the hunchback said, "but I can only give you ten."
"I'm going to break your fucking legs," said the disco cab driver. And after the hunchback had peeled away in his cab, "I'm going to fucking kick his ass. I'll break his legs. Next time I see him at the airport, I will get out and break his legs."
And then, the Tonga room. Although it was never explained exactly what circumstances had led to Molly paying a visit to the Tonga at age fourteen, she had been so thoroughly impressed that she was able to convince even cheap, lazy motherfuckers like myself to make the visit. The place was Tiki-ed out, and, indeed, the boat rumor was true. There was, in fact, not only a keyboardist but a drummer and girl singer on the boat in the pool as well, playing "Top 40 hits of the 70s, 80s, and 90s." So overwhelmed were we by the magic of the Tonga room, we felt it would be wrong not to share the magic with our friends. At our peak, we numbered thirteen.
Did I mention that every half hour there was a "rainstorm" where the lights would dim, monkey and parrot noises would interrupt, and water would fall from the sky over the artificial, indoor lake? And the dancing? There was dancing.
We started drinking when the bar was just opened and empty, around five o'clock, and stayed through the eight and nine o'clock onslaught of what I can only assume were tour groups freshly arrived from Boca Raton. The best part of drinking so damned much so damned early, that we were done by ten and too saturated to not be in bed by eleven.
In other news, Gerty, my three-legged cat, caught a rat on Saturday evening. Though she has been known to chase Orange Leo from Adobe-- a Tom about twice her size and in possession of a full set of limbs-- out of the courtyard, and while she is cat ninja with her cat toys, I didn't think she would actually snag a rat. For one thing, the rats in my courtyard are huge. For another, Gerty only has three legs. Jumping is not really her strong point. Nevertheless, she managed to spring at the wall where the rats congregates under the window of my neighbor Swan, who feeds them (and talks to them, and hears them talk to him), and return to the ground with a fat, wiggling rat in her mouth. I was sitting in the yard having a smoke. The cat took one look at me and came trotting proudly up to me with her prize. I ran inside and shut the door and called Brett on the phone in a state of stupid panic. Brett promised to come clean up the rat remains in the morning, so I could let Gerty have her fun. For maybe ten minutes I heard her playing with her prey. I heard her batting it around in the crunchy fallen leaves and then silence when she picked it up, then more crunching along with awful death wheezing. Then came the most pitiful cat wail I have ever heard. Gerty, who I don't think knows how to kill, had let her rat get away up a tree. With only three legs, she really can't climb and she was pacing back and forth, and looking up to the branches, crying like kid who just watched the sccop of ice cream go falling of the cone. I picked up Gerty and brought her inside for praise and scratching and a can of wet food.
In my heart of hearts, I am proud of my cat.
Posted by hissycat at 09:51 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
September 15, 2005
Disaster Preparedness
While in San Francisco the the voices beaming out of the radio buzz with the anticipation of impending earthquake doom and imperitives to possess an emergency hand-crank radio, and New Orleans continues to marinate in pathogen stew, and the pro-active take classes on emergency preparedness and the paranoid blog about the likelihood of liquefaction in the living room, there is one area of disaster management that continues to be tragically disgredarded. With so much worry and attention being frittered on Acts Of God and Acts In God's Name, we leave ourselves vulnerable as parapelegic lambs to the very real possibility of a zombie infestation. Zombies pose a very real threat, one that has received not nearly enough attention from the media and authorities. See for yourself how catastrophic the arrival of a single zombie in this or any other fair city could be by modeling it with this simulator. In a city so dangerously underprepared to cope with this kind of a disaster, it is essential that you educate yourself on how to survive a zombie invasion. Prepare yourself. Protect yourself.
Posted by hissycat at 09:53 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
August 09, 2005
No Title
 | Currently Reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James Joyce see related |
Brett says I was wearing the 'Upper Egypt' t-shirt I have, but I didn't remember that particularly.
I was so fidgety that day, like my skin had been shrunk tighter than usual and everything moving inside me was easily visible through the thin, taut surface. I couldn't help spasming against it. We held hands on the train and as we walked to a sushi restaurant in alittle gray square set off by a wall full arches. I desperately wanted to speak charmingly, but all I could get out of me were embaressing, gassy little noises: "I'm tired," "I can't believe I'm here," "I did try to sleep on the plane," and a lot of gasping, spasmodic, not entirely appropriate laughter. I wasn't just nervous, unable to form my thoughts out loud. I was on an entirely different plane from nervous. I was overwhelmed. I wasn't having any thoughts at all. Brett introduced me tomackeral, but the truth is I still don't like the oiliness or the taste.
But when we went to the grass by the water with ducks, lied down in thesun and drank the wine he had brought, everything-- everything-- became easier.
Last night we had the nicest, most delicious meal. There was wine and flowers. We ate duck, lamb, caponata, raw fish. I hadport with dessert. And I had the best night when we got home.
--------
Posted by hissycat at 10:16 AM | Comments (56) | TrackBack
August 05, 2005
Maybe I Just Mean A Shower
I think I might want a tattoo.
--------
Posted by hissycat at 05:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack