Hometown Unicorn

2004-01-02T03:54:00.000-05:00

A Farewell to Blogger...

This blog has moved as of RIGHT NOW.

http://www.honikman.com/blog

Update bookmarks and the like.

2004-01-01T13:38:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year Part II
Well, I made it home about 10 minutes ago, so that's cool. Uuuuuum. I'm kind of tired, but it was a fun night/morning. Let's see, well, we got to Motherfucker at a little after 2 and walked around. We ran into our brother, S. and hung out with him for a bit. Then some more people we knew showed up so we gathered together to watch the band, Morningwood. Morningwood are a "typical" rock/indie New York band, except that their lead singer is not the typical rock/indie New York lead singer that you see all over the place. First, she's a laydee with style and pazzaz to spare; and secondly, she doesn't look like she does a lot of heroin or has a lot of issues that cause her to not eat anything like, ever. She was zaftig. "The Indie Janis Joplin" said J. She had great stage presence and sexy rock hair. The band gave away freeby copies of their CD and little buttons that, at first, seemed like they weren't really "of" anything, but later and upon closer inspection turned out to be side-views of a rather shapely pair of boobs.

Rockin!

I would like to thank T for, once again, letting us in for free and without having to line up. Diamond!!!!!

Then J left and we lost S (he went to use the loo and was not heard from again—I think I'll call him and see what he ended up doing for the rest of the night). Then it was down to me, L, and V who we don't know very well, so that was kind of weird. Then I think V sort of wanted to either LEAVE outright, or leave WITH someone, so she, uh, LEFT.

Then the dancing began.

We began in the vintage rock and soul themed room where the music was a mixture of 60s British Invasion and Motown Soul (think The Creation and James Brown). I did my usual thing, which is hard to describe cuz I've never actually seen it—I only do it and I have no idea if I look like a twat or not (don't care). Then we walked around to a few different rooms where the vibe was completely different and the music more electropunk-ish, harder and more "serious"—y'know, like "This song is very cool and if you dance to it, you must WORK it 100%." Oh, and then, because it wouldn't be Motherfucker unless...they played "Welcome to the Jungle" and everybody spontaneously turned into Axl Rose for 4 minutes or so before going back to being a serious look-working rockster.

I've lost my train of thought. I'm a little tired.

Yeah, so I wasn't really into the vibe in any of the other rooms, so we kept returning to the British Invasion room where, each time, there were fewer and fewer people. By now, it was probably somewhere around 5 o'clock and although MF was supposed to go till 8 AM, people had started to convene in the weird-vibe room (that's where the gogo dancers were, after all) and the people in the BI room, where we were, were looking a little the worse (or the better) for wear and some of them were sitting down, falling down, or lying down while the rest of us were getting down.

So I had something I don't usually have on a dance floor: ample space, which was really really nice! I didn't get too hot and sweaty.

L taught me a cool dance where you sort of hitchhike. I think it's one of those "Old" dances like "The Mashed Potato" but it fit right in with the BI room and I was like a kid with a new toy (in fact, I just did it again now while I was thinking about what to type next).

Well, at some point it got be about 7ish (I think).

I remembered how I had wanted to see the sunrise, so I said to L, "Let's go watch the sunrise" and he said, "Battery Park!" So we hopped in a cab and went to Battery Park.

It was freezing.

We watched rosey fingered dawn spread her digits over Brooklyn for about 30 seconds before declaring it too bloody cold to stand around. Thus began the quest for somewhere to sit down and drink a warm beverage.

Man.

Downtown at 7AM on New Years Day is not exactly a hive of activity. I was craving an expensive starbux drink, like a Caramel Macchiato but not a single starbux was open, which is probably the only time in history that has happened.

Finally, we found a weird deli/bodega with a sit-down area upstairs.

So, when it came time to guess what the time was, I guessed 8:00, but it was actually about 9:15. We'd been there almost 2 hours, which explains why my coffee got cold so "quickly."

"Let's go see Elf!" I said.

So we did.

(777-FILM)

But we still had two hours to kill, so we went up to 2nd ave where the movie was and ate oatmeal and orange juice at a Polish deli—the only place that was open within a 3 block radius.

New Years Day is like a weird Twilight Zone day where time has stopped. It's like the one where the guy gets a magic stopwatch that stops time, but he abuses its power and of course it breaks (I think while he's robbing a bank), stranding him alone, in frozen time for all eternity. It was like that, only not completely because the Polish place was open.

I did that thing where you ask the waiter a seemingly innocuous question—in this case it was, "Do you have any brown sugar?"—and then are made to feel like an asshole because "no" they don't have any, so you feel like a twat and end up overcompensating by being waaay too nice to the point where the waiter feels a little unnerved by it.

You know what I'm talking about!

So, finally, it was time to go and see the movie. So we went and saw the movie. It was good. I liked it. I liked that it was quite short, too, because about halfway through my tiredness arrived and I kinda ran out of steam.

Just as well I was sitting in a dark movie theatre then, rather than, say, running a triathlon or figuring out the Grand Unifying Theory. After the movie, I got into a cab and came straight home.

And here I am right now.

Now, ah yes, I will crawl into bed and sleeeeeeep!

I think tomorrow I might get to do Karaoke again, so I gotta rest my voice. When I'm not giving the world the gift of dance, I like to give the gift of song. It's my one-two punch.

2004-01-01T01:32:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!
I'ts 1:30ish in the morning. Did I just get home? If I did, then that's very sad because it's still early. The night. Is Young. As they say.

No, actually, in a stunning display of irony I have technically not gone out yet. Motherfucker starts at 2 so I'm here at J's waiting for the rest of our party to arrive. MF is quite close by, so we'll walk over and see what's happening there.

I'm under the influence of everything right now (do the math, figure that one out youself—it does make sense if you're from a place where things are brought to you by the 5th letter and not some other, later one).

I'm looking forward to some things—in the now and in the future:

1. Seeing the sunrise later today. Sunrises are always magical. Remember in college, when we'd pull all-nighters. Your eyes ache, but you see the sky get lighter and you think about how this is a time that you normally never see because you're busy sleeping.

(I do apologise, by the way, for the extreme fruitiness of this blog—I'm sure I will read this later and cringe or something, but y'know, if you're going to be "A Blog Person" then you ought to be dedicated and not avoid writing blogs just because you might look back on it and think "God, I am an arse.")

I am an arse, God.

Other things I'm looking forward to:

1. 2004. I hear it's the future! It's funny how putting a "20" in front on things makes you think about Arthur C Clark and all the rest of it. The future's just the same as the past except with lycra in everything. They put lycra in everything these days, have you noticed? I had a turkey sandwich today for lunch and I could have sworn it had that "Lycra" symbol stamped on the crust.

2. June. I'm looking forward to having another 30th birthday. The last one was really fun. I went to Vegas for 3 lovely days with S, B and, oh, D. Yes D. D. Hmmm. Oh dear. Oh dear indeed, oh dear. That was quite a disaster, wasn't it. I never fully wrote about it—I don't write about the personal stuff, at least not the DETAILS of it. I'm always in the wrong, in the details. So I leave them out. Leave them out. I need a guidebook for how to be human. How to live on Planet Earth with The Humans. Maybe they have that at Barnes and Noble. I will take a look at the weekend.

3. Getting my shit together [laughs!]. I'll never get it together! But it's fun to think about trying.

4. I will be nicer to people. Sometimes I'm not very nice to people. Really. It's not because I don't like them. It's because [ssssshhhh] I am afraid. Actually, that's not true at all. I don't know what it is, but sometimes I just don't know what to say! You know what would help: Writing things on my hand to say when I don't know what to say. Perhaps the book has a chapter on that.

Well, that's it! This blog is officially CRAP!!!! CRAAAAP!

It's no worse than normal! You're just more aware of how crap it is!

So, Happy New Year to you and yours.

Time to go.

2003-12-30T22:44:00.000-05:00

Rilly Cool T-Shirts
I've just spent the best part of, um, several hours making t-shirts. I made 3, but then I realized that what I should have done was get more artistic, so now I have to buy another t-shirt and do another iron-on thingamajig tomorow after work.

The first thought was, a lime—because I'm a limey. Here's the lime.

Then I thought, hold on a minute, it's not very bright. How 'bout a strawberry, but placed jauntily, like so:

[front]

...And what about sticking a bunch of bananas on the back:

[back]

Well, quite. Technically, the t-shirt is reversible because I cut the neck off, but it wears better with the strawberries on the front. That's just the way it is. I don't argue with my clothes too often. Best not to. Quiet life and all that.

Then I put the lime on an old white t-shirt I had so that I could wear it anyway, but not in a "rock 'n' roll" context.

But then it hit me: "fruit: it's just not very rock 'n' roll." So I made a Marc Bolan t-shirt:

Then I got to thinking that my Bolan T-shirt, though depicting The Jeepster in all his glory, wasn't all that interesting, so I got jiggy with photoshop...

I haven't actually ironed it on anything yet because I have to go and get another T-shirt like the other two. Now I will have a lot of very similar t-shirts with different things ironed on to them. Ah well. Them's the cards I was dealt, etc.

Many many many iterations were discarded before this pink and blue one. Basically, the problem is that my printer will only work well with certain colors. It's an ink jet and, as such, its palette is somewhat muted. The actual printout that I will be ironing on isn't quite as vibrant as the gif above, but it's basically it and I think it'll look nice on a black t-shirt.

Phew. So that was Tuesday Night.

I came home today! I felt that it was necessary for my sanity to return to real life instead of hybernating in Chelsea (that's where I've been since last Wednesday). I feel like I've been away from home for ages, which is kind of true because before Chelsea I was out of town for almost a week.

I think being back home will help me return to earth and get my footing back. There's a lot to be said for sleeping in your own bed with your own things surrounding you. Maybe that was why I was so spaced out before.

So, that's the end of the T-shirt saga, kind of. I still have to make the final one tomorrow. If I don't like it, I will wear the strawberries and bananas one, because it came out quite nicely.

Man, get some iron-on transfer paper and a color printer and make yourself a t-shirt! It's fun and then you can wear it and people will say "Oh, where'd you get that?" and you can say "Uh, actually I made it." And then they'll say, "but that t-shirt is from the GAP, isn't it?" and then you'll feel shame because you should have gone to American Apparel, which you will go to tomorrow instead because there's one right on 6th ave about 4 blocks from your house, you right narner.

Ok, time for bed (ooh, I should make a Zebedee t-shirt next. That would be top!).

G'night.

2003-12-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

In the last few days, thanks to HBOOD and MOD, I have watched some truly awful movies, the most awful of which has to have been: Dreamcatcher, which was breathtakingly bad. Here's the basic story:

Some kids befriend a non-specifically retarded kid who imbues them with non-specific "powers." Then, 20 years later aliens attack rural Maine (well, of course: rural Maine) by laying eggs in people's tummies and then shooting out of their bottoms later on in a bloody mess. Seriously. This is a Lawrence Kasden film. You know, they guy who did The Big Chill and The Empire Strikes Back. That guy.

Then, the nice dude from Band of Brothers gets possessed by one of the aliens who, in a stroke of incredible incomprehesibility, speaks with an English accent. Well of course! In my experience, anus-inhabitting worm aliens are usually also landed gentry from Buckinghamshire.

Then, at the end, the retarded kid turns out to also be an alien, but apparently from a rival planet to the worm aliens. The kid knew all along about the alien invasion and the whole thing so he kills the posh worm alien. Of all the nonsensical parts, this one was the least sensical, I thought. But by then it was par for the course, so I just went with it.

Jason Lee was in it, too, but he died fairly early on when an alien killed him while he was on the toilet. Oh, and there was this weird fungus everywhere that was never fully—or even partly—explained.

I got the impression that the book (by Stephen King—which you would know because, as with all Stephen King novels, it takes place in Maine and revolves around some young kids who listen to Motown and grow up to fight an unspeakable evil) was probably really long and actually made sense.

The movie made no sense whatsoever. In fact, it was so void of sense that it actually robbed me of sense I had about completely unrelated things, like how planes work or why the sky is blue.

The retarded alien is played by Donnie from New Kids on the Block. Shortly after seeing the movie, I saw the video for Hangin' Tough on VH1. In Hangin' Tough, Donnie plays a young punk being ogled by a slew of teens.

This should be a lesson to all who seek to be ogled by teens: fame is fleeting and watch out you don't end up in a movie where you play a retarded alien with non-specific special powers. Are you listening Lance Bass!!!??

I also watched Pumpkin in which Christina Ricci falls in love with a retarded kid with special powers. Retarded kids with special powers is a sui generis "movie genre." Anyway, in this case, the special powers are of the athletic variety. Basically, Christina Ricci plays a spoilt soririty girl who falls in love with a special olympian after she is forced to coach him.

It's a very silly film.

Great soundtrack, though! In particular, the use of Belle & Sebastian's Stars of Track and Field (well, you would...) and a cover of If You Go Away sung by Bjork-immitator and fellow Icelandic Pixie Elf, Emmeliana Torrini (who we don't like cuz she sounds too much like Bjork—K and I saw her in Seattle as the opening act for someone else and she was quite good, but not a patch on Bjork who is the Queen of ethereal elfen pop).

So, yes, the soundtrack was quite good. Although I find it hard to buy Christina Ricci as a stuck up sorority chick. She's just too indie, too kooky, too weird! She's not cookie-cutter enough to pull it off, even with a blonde wig and some polo shirts. She will always be Wednesday Addams. Also, she has man hands, have you noticed? I have.

Apart from that, I watched a lot of shows on VH1. Shows about bad videos, naked celebrities, Rock Star daughters, stars and their money...god, VH1 is so genius! Trashy + Genius.

However, all this sitting around on the couch watching trashy shows must come to a stop. It's no way to live. The weather has been mild of late, so there's no excuse not to get out and about and do things. This weekend, after I recover from New Year's Eve, I'm going to plan some activities around the city. Last weekend I didn't do anything at all and now I feel kind of spaced out. I wanted to rest, but I think there's a difference between resting and doing absolutely nothing. You can rest but still do stuff. In fact, I think it's more restful to do stuff than to not do anything at all and end up in a weird funk.

I've been very antisocial lately, too. Apart from having a lot of work to do, I've avoided going out. I'm not sure why. Maybe I just needed to chill out for a bit, but then I got carried away with the chilling out and now I'm in hermitville and wondering how that happened.

The problem is that I'm filled with lacklustre (if you can be "filled" with lacklustre, that is). Well, I have it. I'm bored and tired and can't-be-arsed-ed. I'm on a viscious bicycle. I need new and interesting things.

I get like this every so often. Usually, I move to a new place, but I don't really want to do that this time. I feel like my itinerancy has resulted in my having no roots anywhere. I feel like I could blow away and be lost if the wind picked up enough. I don't want that, though. I want to be rooted and have traditions and familiar things. I don't really like this feeling that I could just go somewhere else and start all over again and that nothing here really matters all that much. I've had that attitude for as long as I can remember, and I think I've gotten to the point where I want something else, something more solid; but I don't know what (or where). I feel like on the one hand it's good not to feel attachment to anything or place or person. That way, I'm completely free. The downside, though, is that attachment gives you a sense of belonging that is comforting. I've never felt like I belonged anywhere. It's not that I feel out-of-place or uncomfortable—especially in NYC where everybody is from somewhere else (even if it's only as far away as Queens). No, it's not that. It's just that I always feel like a foreigner wherever I am.

I wonder if that's kind of a symptom of the times? For the last 100 years, there has been so much more migration going on, so much more opportunity to travel and reinvent and change. Maybe I'm a product of the last century in that I am somewhat rootless. There's no infrastructure for people like me (and there are lots of us) other than what we make for ourselves so it can be daunting.

I always end up writing about this.

I'm bored of it myself.

I don't want to be tied to anything, but I worry that if I'm not tied to anything at all, then I might float away like that French kid's balloon.

I guess I am tied to things—I'm tied to certain family members. The problem is that these people are also not tied to anything, so we're all floating around tied together, but not fixed to anything else. They float and I float with them. It's not really a depressing thought. It's not uplifting either. I like it in a way. I like the freedom. I think about this a lot, about my career in particular. When I get bored, I will do something else. I don't feel hemmed in at all. But I guess the flip side of that is that there's no sense of permanance.

I think that's more the zeitgeist than just my particular issue. I think that's the way things are right now, especially with the job market. There's a lot of fluidity all over the shop.

So, I'm not sure what I'm saying other than that I'm a product of the times and that in some ways I'm very happy about that and in others I'm not so thrilled.

I'm also saying that you don't need to bother watching Dreamcatcher because it is crap.

2003-12-29T16:03:00.000-05:00

It's Monday.

The office smells like custard.

Who knows why?

2003-12-27T12:21:00.000-05:00

I heard on the radio last night that the death toll in Iran has risen to ~20,000—with a further 50,000 odd who are seriously injured. It's amazing: the destructive forces that lie in wait for us from "Ma Nature." I'm surprised we bother trying to come up with new ways to destroy one another when Nature has it all sewn up. Maybe we should take that as a hint, eh.

That's my tree-hugging two-penneth for today.

Well, I suppose that's of no comfort to people in Iran (and their loved ones is other countries), so I'll shut up.

2003-12-26T09:24:00.000-05:00

Boxing Day
Every year, on Boxing Day, I wake up and think, "If my parents had stayed together, today would have been their ____ wedding anniversary" and then I think about how weird life would be right now if that were actually the case.

Then I get up and go about my business.

That's what I did this morning, as per tradition. The magic number this year is 42, which if memory serves is also the answer to the question, "What is the meaning of Life?"

In case you weren't aware, yesterday was xmas. What did I do? Well what would I do? I sat on the settee watching HBO on Demand! It was awsome! I mean I really couldn't do anything, could I? Not when all (well, a lot) of the shops were shut and everything. Don't blame me for my sloth!

Yesterday I thought about drawing up a list of New Year's resolutions, but then I thought, Well, I don't have a pen so I had to abandon the enterprise. I know, that's not very interesting.

Anyway, had I been able to procure a pen yesterday, here's what my resolutions might have been:

1. Learn to speak Russian
2. Stand up straighter.
3. Grow hair really long but without attracting "Alanis Morissette" comparisons.
4. Stop smoking*
5. Become all-knowing but without sacrificing eye.
6. Finish reading "The Lord of the Rings"
7. Get married, move to the suburbs, slit wrists.
8. Visit Denmark.
9. Buy pair of wellies.
10. Become licensed pilot.
11. Get teeth straightened.

And, finally, the same resolution I make (and break) every year...

12. Try to at least act like a decent human being.

And Now...
Haven't "And Now..."'d for a while.

Everyone is doing their top ___ of 2003 list, so here's my top 10 albums of 2003. In no particular order, though. Dunno if these are "best of" but they're the best of all the albums I bought this year.

Ether Song - Turin Brakes
Get Born - Jet
Marquee Moon (Reissue) - Television
Logic Will Break Your Heart - The Stills
Up the Bracket - The Libertines
Permission to Land - The Darkness
Keep On Your Mean Side - The Kills
Take Them On, On Your Own - BRMC
Elephant - The White Stripes
Echoes - The Rapture

*This one should be pretty easy since I don't smoke as it is.

2003-12-24T14:54:00.000-05:00

A ha!

From The Onion today:

Letter From Employer Thankfully Omits
Balls-Copying Incident
SAN FRANCISCO—Randall Konerko, a 39-year-old database administrator looking for a new job in the field, was relieved to learn Monday that a letter of recommendation from his former employer makes no reference to the Dec. 11 balls-copying incident that led to his dismissal. "Whew, that's a relief," said Konerko after an interview with Luminant Worldwide. "I was sure Mr. Alland would mention that whole thing, but, mercifully, he didn't." Konerko has made a promise to himself never to engage in testicular Xeroxing, even if it's 2 a.m. and the office seems empty.

Ohmigod, I used to work for LUMINANT WORLDWIDE! That's, like, rilly cool. Fnaw, etc.

2003-12-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

As usual, very interesting article in Salon today about moderate religious leaders and the fight for the White House. Sounds promising. I hope it pans out! I'd like to see the political religious movement in America back in the hands of the sane & compassionate. It's true that christianity has been hijacked lately by a bigotted, zealous minority who claim to speak for everybody (viz. Christians across the US). It's high time "everybody" stood up and said, "Wait a minute, this isn't what my religion is about!"

As I said to my dear old Dad not two days ago, from what I know about Jesus, he stood for the exact opposite of what today's "Religious Right" keep yammering on about. I've seen the movies, and Jesus was always talking about sharing the wealth, being compassionate, being inclusive, civil rights, etc. As far as I know, he was not an advocate of large corporations running the show, preemtive wars, condemning people to death without due process, and placing the tax burden on the poor. Nor did he wander around talking about how gay people are all going to hell. Did he even mention gay people? I don't think he did—that's either old, old testament stuff (the stuff Jesus was trying to move away from) or it's from Leviticus, which is full of all sorts of very weird stuff about farm animals.

Anyway, that's all I'm saying about that.

******

Speaking of The Jees, tomorrow is xmas, so I have a whole day off during which I have nothing more pressing to attend to than a bit of reading and then perhaps a movie with the big bruvah. It's nice to look forward to things.

I slept very well last night—possibly because I was so bloomin' tired! I woke up tired, though; and I'm tired right now.

That's really all I have to report. It's not very interesting, but there it is. Sometimes, things aren't very interesting.

Seth from The OC is now my friendster. What a feather in my cap it is to have such illustrious friendsters in my arsenal.

I think "In My Arsenal" would be a great title for my autobiography. It makes sense because, really, what is an autobiography if not an illustration of one's "Life Arsenal"?

In My Arsenal
By Joanna K. Honikman, aged 30 and a half (and a bit)—but I'm told I can pass for 26.

Chapter I: The Beginning
I was born during the Disco era, in a University town in the midwest. Then some stuff happened and now I live in New York just off of Washington Square, which is also the name of a pretty cool novel by Henry James. Coincidentally, my two favorite boy's names are Henry and James. Isn't that interesting? Well, maybe not. Brit Ekland's autobiography was really interesting. Maybe you should read that instead.

Chapter II: The Bit That Happened After
I grew up in Leicester, proud home to a moderately sized clock tower and a premier league football team struggling to avoid relegation yet again. The fattest man ever to have lived in England was from Leicester. His name was Daniel Lambert and he was a major GUT LORD. He taught me that it's ok to be fat, as long as you're INCREDIBLY fat to the point where people feel it necessary to dedicate a museum to your extraordinary corpulance. Being about 10 lbs heavier than you'd like to be, however, is not ok.

Chapter III: You Know, You Could Stand to Lose 10 lbs from Your Arsenal
I went to college in Northern California, a place where people think Northern California is somehow important in the global arena. It isn't.

Chapter IV: Eastward Ho!
I like living in New York. Apart from during the Summer and Winter. I like Spring and Autumn the best. I like raspberries, but the seeds sometimes get stuck in your teeth. Well, I mean in my teeth.

Chapter V: The Bit I Borrowed From Brit Ekland
Soon after filming ended on The Wicker Man, I flew to Monte Carlo where I was introduced to a young rocker named Rod Stewart. Rod and I had a scorching love affair that was simply too hot not to burn out, like the soaring wings of an eagle that flew too close to the Sun and then got pulled in and burned by the Sun's massive gravitational pull and incredibly intense heat—that's what our love was like, except nobody actually physically got burned unless you're talking about a steam burn from the incredibly steamy passion we felt for one another, which resembled a kettle that had been left to boil out of control because nobody was paying attention (I think they were busy watching the eagle).

Roger Moore? Same thing.

2003-12-23T10:49:00.000-05:00

Wither Friendster?
Or something like that, cuz when I tried to log on to friendster today after learning that Captain Oats from The OC had added me as "his" Friendsturd, I got some weird shopping directory site instead, like, a bunch of times. This happened once before as well.

I think The 'Ster has some powerful enemies (powerful Geeky, I mean—cuz Geeks are into hacking into your site and redirecting people to a different webpage; they do that sort of thing all the time—I mean inbetween LOTR roll-playing games and competative masturbation tourneys. And before you yell, "But Jo, aren't you a Geek?" I will nip in the bud any images you may conjure of me winning the gold medal by explaining that I am a not a Geek. I am an Anorak. It is not the same. Don't ask me how it differs. It just does.)

What the hell was I talking about?

Shit. I don't really know, to be honest.

Here's a really exciting story—almost as exciting as a Lord of the Rings Masturbation Rollplaying Championship Cup Final.

I left Santa Barbara last night at 8:30 local time after a slap up meal of "Chicken Fajita Pita Wrap" at Chilis, the place where they have the now-famous Baby back ribs. Who the hell wants to nosh on a baby's back anyway? That's hardly enough for one person, unless the baby is very plump of course, in which case you're probably okay as long as you have some fries with it. Anyhoo, I don't eat babies (anymore) so I had the fajita pita wrap and then I got dropped off at the airport where I boarded a plane that had propellers and tiny, tiny seats and upon which I spent an hour suffering through "US Magazine" and some gastro-intestinal discomfort brought on by the Fajita Pita Wrap. Next time, I'll have the Baby's Spine Au Jus instead.

Then I landed at LAX and walked about 10 miles between gates, stopping on the way at the gift shop to buy "Entertainment, Weakly" because it had a picture of some LOTR people on the cover. Then I got on my plane and actually sat down in two seats that were not my seat before I regained the ability to understand simple number and letter symbols and found the correct seat. The second time around, my seat-mate actually said the following, which I thought was rather previous of her:

"I need the aisle because I have a small bladder."

Seriously.

Maybe I'm uptight, but that's not something I would share with a total stranger. What if I was the sort of person who laughed at people for things like that? (Note: I am; and I did, but to myself, quietly).

Then, later, she offered me her bag of chips from her snack. Like I would want some chips from some chick whose bladder isn't even the right size?! Hello! I have some standards.

So, I sat on the plane reading "The Fellowship of the Ring" and occasionally looking out of the window and thinking, "If the engines just stopped working right now, we would plummet to earth with breathtaking alacrity."

Then I watched Pirates of the Carribbean.

Then the plane landed.

Then I walked to where they were going to give me my bag.

Then I waited for my bag.

Then I saw my bag approaching me on the carousel.

Then I watched a lady get hit square in the crotch with a large suitcase and tried not to laugh out loud.

Then I grabbed by bag and walked away, thinking about how funny it was when the lady got hit square in the crotch by the large suitcase.

Then I thought, "I am evil."

Then I thought, "Wait a minute, in a morally relativistic universe, if humans are to achieve their potential we must rise above the herd mentality and live beyond good and evil."

Then I thought, "Nietzsche was a twat, eh."

Then I got a cab and sat on the Van Wyck for about half an hour thinking about blamanches from my past.

Then I arrived home and ate some chex.

Then I took a shower and put on a slightly different outfit than the one I had been wearing before.

Then I went out and walked around to see if the Pottery Barn on Houston and West B'way was open yet (it wasn't; it was also not a Pottery Barn but a Crate and Barrel, which is no good because the thing I wanted to buy was from PB).

Then I bought a copy of Q Magazine with Justin Timberflake on the cover.

Then I went to starfucks and had a large cup of coffee.

Then I spaced out for, like, an hour, and when I came round I thought "Where the hell am I? Oh, I'm in a public place. Huh. weird."

Then I went home.

Then I checked my email and made some calls and went to some websites and started writing this blog.

Then it was suddenly right now and I had no idea what was going to happen next because it was all unfolding while I was typing and, in fact, what was actually happening was entirely determined by the words I was/am typing into this post.

Then I thought, "Maybe I should take a nap because I'm a bit sleep deprived and this may be affecting the quality level of this blog."

Then I thought, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2003-12-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

Aw...

We just had a teeny tiny earthquake here. It lasted for a while, but was very tame. It was so tame that we stood in the family room nowhere near any doors and laughed "Oh, we are having an earthquake! I thought I was just having a dizzy spell." and L remarked, "Ah, I'd say no more than a 3.5." Then I went back to my reading.

2003-12-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Hanukkah (or Chanukah if you like that better). I got a lot of ve-ry nice presents from the fam a lee.
Turns out LA and Santa Barbara are a lot colder than weather.com said they would be, so I've spent most of the last couple of days hanging out in the house, doing nothing. Actually, I've been reading Lies, and the Lying Liars who tell them by Al Franken, which is an excellent read. I recommend it.

What else? Well, saw The Return of the King at the Arclight theatre in Hollywood on Friday (after a breakfast of very, very delicious banana pancakes). That was cool. I want to see the movie again, although I think I've come to the conclusion that I really don't like the hobbits all that much. They are pretty boring. I much prefered all the dynastic power struggle shit going on in the various houses of Gondor and whatevertheotheronewas. I suppose it helps liven things up when you really fancy the dude playing Aragorn.

Things I didn't like about the film: Oh, who cares! It was top and adventuresome and I cried during some of the battle scenes (it was all very "Cry god for Harry, England, and St George"-esque). I might actually finish reading the book now. After that, I'll finish Ulysseys (promise!). I'm just waiting around for Book 11 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, though, so once that comes out everything else will return to the backburner.

Back to NY tomorrow. Things are not 100% all that great at work right now and they got a little worse just as I left to go on this little vacation. It's nice when you can sit down and get some advice on how to navigate the politically charged waters of Academia from a dude who spent 25+ years professing Architecture at various American universities (that "dude" would be My Dad, of couse). He made me feel a little better about things, but I still have to do some damage control when I get back and I hate having to do that. I like a quiet life where I get on with my job. I don't like all this other crap that comes along with it. There's no way to avoid it, though. Unless you're so wealthy that you don't ever have to work and can just spend your life shopping and reading.

Ah well.

As my Mum would say, "Never mind, you've got another one."

Anyway, so LA. It's nice if you've got a car and can drive. I have no car and I don't know how to drive. Well, I do actually "know" how to drive inasmuch as I can get behind the wheel of an automobile and drive it; but I don't know how to do that if there are other cars or solid objects close by and I certainly have no official authorization from anybody that would allow me to get behind said wheel, so basically if I lived in LA, I would be completely fucked.

We spent most of Friday driving around to various different Malls. If I recall, we went to "Hollywood and Highland". "The Beverly Center". and I can't remember what any of the others were called, actually. Oh well. I bought hanukkah gifts and we saw the movie and then we walked up and down Melrose Ave looking in all the tacky little shops that sell faux-vintage t-shirts. I almost bought a skirt, but didn't because it looked too much like about 6 other skirts I own. It's one thing to buy the same shade of lipstick over and over again (which I do), but having a closet full of identical skirts is just shameful.

After that we met up with one of MissJ's friends and had dinner at...(I know!!)...the Cheesecake Factory. I had heard stories about TCF from J and D'cifer, both of whom had marveled at the ridiculous portion sizes and delicious, uh, cheesecakes (well, I would hope so!). So we went to one in, ah, Brentwood (?) and of course I had to ask "Oooh, is this near where Nicole and OJ lived?" but apparently this was not that particular end of Brentwood.

Anyway, so I ate about two spoonfuls of chinese chicken salad before admitting defeat and ordering some cheesecake plus another cheesecake to take up to Santa Barbara so that the madness could continue. Then we loaded the car up with said cheesecake and headed north to Santa Barbara, where Michael Jackson lives.

Last night (Saturday), we had dinner with my grandfather and my aunt and uncle at a "charming" Italian restaurant down by the seafront. I was bitterly cold because I was wearing a skirt and sandals even though it was not even close to the 74 degrees I had been promised by weather.com (those bastards!). I shivered my way through three pieces of bread and some rather soupy gnocchi. Then we went back to the house to eat cheesecake and celebrate Hanukkah by sitting silently and eating cheesecake. My aunt's annual Hanukkah party is not till next week, so I guess everybody was saving themselves. Cheesecake was excellent, though.

Today, I returned one of my hanukkah gifts and got something else instead. Other than that I had a lovely day doing absolutely sod all except reading the rest of Lies, and... and talking to my Dad about the vagaries of working for a university. My dad is full of stories. I've been around for 30 years and there are stories I haven't heard—like the time he worked in the laundry room of a ship that sailed from South Africa to England, or the time he played the lead in his college production of Hair. When we were small and used to visit him during the holidays, he made up a whole series of stories for us about a Magic Airplane and a guy named Hector. In addition to the Magic Airplane and Hector, there was a Magic Camera (sometimes), a band of monkeys (occasionally), and 3 very important characters who were based on the 3 of us (always). There was "Sophie", the responsible one (J); "Rachmaninoff", who was cheeky (my brother, S); and "Frieda", who was always going off by herself and getting lost, just like (me).

Anyway, that's a whole other blog...

Tomorrow is my last day here, so I might break with tradition and go outside for a walk—but only if it warms up. If it's cold, I'll stay indoors and read the encyclopeidia.

2003-12-18T09:32:00.000-05:00

Just took the quiz from Parklife's blog today. Apparently, the world leader I most resemble is...

What Famous Leader Are You?

[Visit Parklife's blog—it's quite good.]

The test had all these questions like "Do you cower in fear all the time" and "is life meaningless" and stuff like that so I tried to be honest: Yes, and Probably. Although I suspect that the test just randomly generates a world leader. Even so, it's still a fun time-waster. Thanks "Expecting to Fly" geezer.

Well, I have a sh*t load to do today and I have to leave early to get to Newark to go on my holidays. Just to clarify, I'm not going on my holidays to Newark, it's just that they have this rather large airport out there (EWR, baby!) where these things called planes take you places. Me, I'm going to LA (note how I'm not calling it "smelLA" or "HelLA" anymore—that's because I've turned over a new non-hater leaf whereby I don't hate on other towns unless they do it first. I'll be listening carefully, LA).

2003-12-17T10:33:00.000-05:00

Aliens Dancing Around in Space

Had a weird dream last night!

J was friends with Edie Sedgewick, only it wasn't the actual Edie, but an English cousin of hers with the same name who was equally fabulous. Anyway this Edie had made a movie about Napoleon in which, at the very end, Boney settles down and marries a nice Jewish girl. As this was an indie movie that Edie had thrown together on a shoestring budget using her friends as actors, J had played the part of the nice Jewish girl, so we were all attending the premier which, for some reason, was held simultaneously at Max Fish and a mystery living room done up (fittingly) in the Empire style.

Things took a nasty turn, though, when a mutual friend of ours was high handed with J. She turned to me with a teary face and said, "I don't know why E was so mean to me" so I turned to E (who, I should mention, has never been anything but really nice to everyone!) and gave him what for.

Then it was time to go in and watch the premier of the movie about Napoleon in which, at the end, Boney settles down and marries a nice Jewish girl...at which point I woke up.

Last night I made cookies for my co-workers. Now, before anybody faints from shock, all I did was buy some of those kits from Gristedes and then shove the gaff in the oven until it was done. I had to throw one of the batches away, though, because it just tasted kinda weird. I think it was slightly undercooked, but not in that good way that cookies are oftens lightly doughy!

The remaining 3 batches seem to be going down well with everybody, but I feel like I have to mention that I didn't really "make" them, but merely put them in the oven for a while and then stuck them in some tupperware.

Two of the batches are actually quite disturbing! They're these weird sugar cookies with edible stickers on them! Basically, you plop some icing on and then stick a sticker on top. There are four stickers: a Reindeer, Father Christmas, An Elf, and then this other one that looks like two aliens dancing around in space. I'm not sure what it's meant to be, but it's a little disturbing. There you are thinking "Oh, it's wintertime and holidays and cookies and Father Christmas" and then BLAM: aliens dancing around in space. It's a little incongruous. They're pretty tasty, though, which does make up for the disturbing image of the aliens dancing around in space.

My guess is that it's all tied into the poinsetta conspiracy. See, poinsettas are actually sentient alien beings who just happen to slightly resemble plants. But they're not really plants at all. Late at night, I suggest you creep to where the poinsettas are and observe their movements. You'll see things that'll curl your hair (why do you think I have this massive mop on me noggin?). Report back to me later, though, because I'm busy right now investigating the second half of the conspiracy, which involves secret coded edible cookie stickers and aliens dancing around in space

[oh, I forgot to tell you: I just got some spam from "Moody Dane" hahahahaham subject: "Re: RNHU, suddenly grew round" No idea what it means, but I dig the Hamlet ref.]

2003-12-16T16:50:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the fake names used in spam are kinda cool and imaginative. Take two spams I just received:

1. Chet Marinese—subject: "we value you.Kvts"

2. Britt Blore—subject: "Exc1usive positions in MontanaPqsyf"

I don't know what exclusive positions in "MontanaPqsyf" are exactly, but when someone called "Britt Blore" is at the helm of these "MontanaPqsyf" positions, then you can tell that if you were dumb enough to actually open the email, you'd likely be in for a high octane thrill blast!

That's all I wanted to say.

2003-12-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

For Shame!
Being from Leicester is like being on a rollercoaster. Sometimes you feel pride but then right after you feel shame. First off, I was listening to the radio last night and the Beeb did a report on the future of multiculturalism in Great Britain and, of course, they chose Leicester as their example city. It wasn't an entirely glowing report—but the gist was that by the year 2010, Leicester will be the first city in GB where Whitey is not in the majority. I like the sound of that! The report also focused on a number of ethnic enclaves in the toon, the newest of which is a community of about 15,000 Somalis that has sprung up in the last 3 years or so.

The gist was that while the "goal" of multiculturalism was that cultures should mix together and learn from each other, that wasn't really how it worked. The reality was more a series of communities that coexist in the larger scope of the town. Sounds a bit like New York, to me...Although there is a considerable amount of mingling—usually by second and third generation minorities—the overwhelming trend (in Leicester at least) is not toward a melting pot or even complete absoption into the larger "British" culture (if such a thing even exists), but toward smaller ethnic enclaves existing side-by-side to form the larger canvas of The Town.

It's not perfect, but it's a start. Maybe it's even the key. I don't know. It's nice to belong to a community yet still be involved in the larger city culture. That seems to be where Leicester is headed. I guess we'll see how that develops. But I've always felt a sense of pride that my town has, for example, the largest Jain community in all of Europe. That's just one example. I like the fact that my hometown is not some backwater burg choc-full of white people who know nothing about other cultures except what they see on TV. Leicester may not be a large metropolis, but you can't argue that it lacks diversity.

Every time I go back to Leicester (which, admittedly, is only twice in the last 6 years), it seems very different than the Leicester I grew up in. And that's a positive thing. The landscape has gotten a little more interesting; or maybe I'm just old enough not to feel trapped when I'm there. It's probably a little of both.

I've forgotten my point, as usual. Oh, right: Leicester. So, the report was talking about how Leicester is a true model of multiculturalism in Great Britian (the good and bad aspects of that).

Then this morning I read about the disasterous 0-2 game against Birmingham City wherein nearly all the LCFC got sent off for being rowdy and belligerant. I say "nearly all" but there were actually only two red cards plus a couple of bookings. But the point is that the Team were down two men and then got their asses whupped.

See: pride followed closely by shame. Rollercoaster.

Ah, this reminds me! I slept really well last night!!! I went to bed at about 11:30ish, listened to the radio for about an hour, and then slept right through till 7:10! Not too shabby. You know why? I think it's because this freelance project is finally coming to a close. We're at the "ironing out the creases" stage, which is really cool. All the main functionality is in place and working (famous last words). It's just a tweak here and a "can you add some functionality there" kind of stuff...

Plus, I'm going on Holiday on Thursday for four whole days to sunny LA & Santa Barbara. Plus, Miss J has already bought our tix to The Return of the King for Friday morning when, I hope, it won't be horribly horribly crowded (just one "horribly" probably).

The year is winding down, which is good. A lot of drama happened this year. You know, a lot of drama happens every year; and every year around this time, I say "Next year will be a fabulous, drama-free year of fun and happiness and only good things for The Jo." Then as soon as January rolls around, the Drama begins all over again and doesn't end until Novemberish.

Top!

And, finally...

Happy Birthday to me lovely Mum, who turns <ahem> 39 today!

2003-12-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

I have mild insomnia. This means that I am perpetually under-rested and over-tired. I don't go completely without sleep. I just don't get enough of it.

Funnily enough, I just started reading a book about a guy who has insomnia. I think there's more to the story that just that, but I'm only about 20 pages in.

In other news, god god god I've had a frustrating weekend! Friday I was up till 3 working on this freelance project. Right while I was in the middle of trying to get things done on a pretty tight deadline, the bloody server crashed for about 2 hours. Yesterday it kept caching pages, so that I never knew whether I was really fixing bugs, or just driving myself INSANE.

Try to imagine what that's like. It really sucks. It's like a modern take on the movie Gaslight where some people try to fool this chick into thinking she's going mad so that they can get their mits on her fortune. I think it ends happily, but up to the end, the chick thinks she's going mad. That's how I've been feeling all weekend. All weekend. Not much sleep; suspicion of insanity. Oh, and PMS, too. I've been mainlining the evening primrose oil in an attempt to not completely lose it and go on a rampage around Chelsea (that's where I am right now doing QA on J's Mac and Jza's PC, which are conveniently located about 10 meters apart).

Meanwhile, back in the Village, who knows what's going on. It's snowing outside. Bit of a winter wonderland, then. I might jack this whole malarky in right now and pop round the corner and see a movie. I just feel like for the last, god, month or more I have done nothing but work on this project. I know I sound overly negative, and the truth is that I'm proud of the work I and the designer I'm working for have done, but there's been some stress at my actual day job, too, so I feel like I'm up against it and the stress of that is getting to me. Were I not tearing my hair out trying to get this thing finished and working right in time for Monday, I would be patting myself on the back and acting somewhat like a smug bastard over it. But so much has gone wrong, and I've had so many technical issues with the ISP, that I just don't trust that this project will ever end.

So, after we go live (which is another hurdle that can cause its own unique set of headaches—which reminds me that there are things I can do now that will make that easier, so I should probably do them rather than go to the movies, ah well. Such is the loife of a lowly Anorak...) I will probably look back and feel like I did a good job and that it was worth the stress and the eppys and the gaslighting.

In more important news, the US caught Sadaam today. The pundits have been jawing on all morning/afternoon about how this will be the turning point for Bush's 2004 campaign. This plus the economy taking an apparent upswing has, according to said pundits, changed the political landscape overnight. Yesterday, all anyone could talk about was Gore enorsing Howard Dean. Today, it's all about Bush.

Tomorrow, I'm sure the nation's attention will be focused back on Paris Hilton where it belongs.

It's funny. Does the capture of Sadaam legitimate the war? A few pundits seem to think it does. As though winning makes it ok. If Hitler had won, would that have made it ok? I guess it would because, as I learned long ago in A Level Economics class (thanks, Mr. Hunting), it's the winners who write the history books. The losers are usually too dead to hold a pen.

Not that I like Sadaam Hussein. I'm probably in the minority of the "Left" because while I found the lies the Bush administration told to justify the war pretty fucked up, I don't necessarily think its such a bad thing to unseat a brutal dictator like Sadaam. I feel pretty ambivalent about it, because there are lots of similarly brutal dictators around the world, but we aren't that bothered about any of them. However, is it better to do nothing just because you can't do everything? I don't know. It's tough. We have been engaged in a conflict with Iraq through the last three administrations...But I think the American people (y'know, we who pay for all of this stuff in the first place) should have had the opportunity to decide whether or not we invaded Iraq at this particular time given that we were in the middle of trying to "sort out" Afghanistan and perhaps should have finished that job before starting another. I think, even though there are positives that will come out of this conflict, we've made things a lot worse for a lot of people in the Middle East and that's only going to bite us on the ass later on, regardless of how much "success" results from the war on Iraq.

It also worries me that there are many, many people in this country and elsewhere who think Sadaam Hussein had something to do with 9-11. He didn't. Unless Bin Laden's open hatred of Sadaam was just a clever ruse, its unlikely Sadaam would have been in cahoots with his mortal enemy. We talk about "The Middle East" as if it were one cohesive political entity, but that's very far from reality.

On another note: This whole Halliburton thing worries me too. I don't think the Bush administration is to blame for a corporation overcharging the tax payers any more than I blame any government for corporate greed. Corporate greed has been a factor since before great grampaw Bush even knew what Carpetbagging was. Unless there is proof that Bush or Cheney told Halliburton that it, and its subsidiaries, could overcharge the military for services and that the Bush administration would turn a blind eye, then what are they guilty of apart from being typical Washington millionaire politicians with ties to big corporations? If that's a "crime" (and I'm not saying it shouldn't be...) then we should probably arrest 90% of our elected officials. Why are we (viz. people who don't support Bush) muddying the waters of opposition with an attack that will only backfire on us, making us look like a bunch of alarmists who aren't interested in the truth, but only in attacking Bush?

Listen, it's very dangerous to start slinging mud like that. It will backfire. I thought Bush said the right thing in response to the Halliburton overcharging issue. He said, "If they've overcharged, they'll pay it back." And, let's not forget that it was the Pentagon who found the discrepancy during a routine audit. If there were some conspiracy, then it probably wouldn't have come to light in the first place. Unless I'm terribly naive, I don't think that every single thing that happens is proof of some government conspiracy. That's a lot of conspiracy. Who has time?

I think this is one where it really is a storm in a teacup; but if we keep crying wolf like this, at some point (and I hope we haven't reached that point yet) no one is going to listen to us at all! Clinton also employed Halliburton—the military is largely privatised and has been for a long while. Companies like Halliburton provide services to the military; and there are probably few politicians in Washington who aren't affiliated with some giant corporation or other. So, do the math yourself. Bush and Cheney's connections to Halliburton are hardly unusual. On the contrary, it seems to be the norm in Washington.

I'm not saying it's OK. It's just that I really don't think that there's some conspiracy going on: it's business as usual. Corporations try to get away with as much as they can before somebody catches them. That's historically how corporations operate. That's the problem we need to address and it's not Cheney or Bush's fault that corporations overcharge people. Shit, just go to your local Duane Reade and see how large corporations overcharge people!

We should do something about that! We really should. I'm getting a little off topic here, but one thing we can do right now is to shop at local stores, rather than chain stores. Buy American-made goods and apparel whenever possible—that is, if you care about keeping jobs in America (and I do cuz I have a job in America that I would like to keep). Support the small business owner, not the giant corporations!!! If there is such as thing as "the American Dream" then is has much more in common with a family-run, small scale private business than with a giant multinational corporation with a million subsidiaries and a CEO who lives in a mansion and pays for elections.

Bush is a president for and of large corporations, not workers or small business owner/operators—i.e. Bush does not represent 99% of people living in America. I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat! Unless you're in the C-suite of a large corporation, then Bush does not represent your interests to any significant degree and you should vote for somebody who does—doesn't have to be a democrat. Just don't let these guys fool you into thinking that because they're not in favor of "big government" that they're in favor of you. What does it matter how "big" or "small" the government is anyway if the country is being run by an oligarchy of large corporations?

Phew. That's enough ranting for today.

2003-12-12T14:48:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think its a form of aural harassment to have to listen to a mystery coworker on the phone. Her office is a good 30 meters away, as the magpie flies, but for some reason she hasn't cottoned on to the fact that you don't have to YELL REALLY LOUDLY when talking on the telephone—your voice doesn't have to carry all the way to the person on the other end because there are these things called "phone lines" inbetween that carry the sound.

From what I am forced to gather, this person has a Mother. I know this because on an almost daily basis, my co-worker expresses her frustration at the Mother's constant demands on her. These demands get worse around the holidays and, lately, have revolved around the issue of who is going to be responsible for cooking the xmas dinner.

She also seems to have some problems with her life mate. Apparently, he also makes constant demands on her. Luckily for my ears, they are not sexual demands (or perhaps they are, but they're speaking in code). She only has two hands, for god's sake and she can't run around after work taking care of his shit.

I wish I didn't know all of this, but I do. And now you know it as well. You have been ocularly harassed, then.

2003-12-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

Kroll
Ok, so see the picture to the left in the "Where is my mind" category...
Well, here it is again for just in case:

See the author(s) name(s)?

This has been puzzling me since I posted this picture. Is it one guy called Harry Harrison Kroll OR is it Harry Harrison writing with help from Kroll who, in addition to being a timetraveler from outerspace is an expert on Hatfield & McCoy-themed sexual apocraphy.

I went to bed earlier and fell asleep; but then I got up again because I was confused over the fact that NPR carries The Jim Lehrer Newshour and The Brian Lehrer Show which I always get mixed up. I had to look it up on the interweb and I discovered that, far from a case of me being on crack, it's actually two completely different shows. But I like them both, so it's ok.

2003-12-11T14:52:00.000-05:00

...And while I'm at it, it occurred to me yesterday that the most meaningful "relationship" I've ever had is with Cadbury.

Perhaps I should look for a dude who is smooth and velvety and from the outskirts of Birmingham.

2003-12-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggg!

2003-12-10T10:53:00.000-05:00

These Pipes Are Cleeeean!
Is it a coincidence (or a Cohencidence) that the plumber who came by this morning and cleaned our pipes (so to speak) had the same initials as a certain Boy Wizard who is known to have performed heroic deeds in a bathroom..?

I think not!

Anyway, I took a proper shower this morning and I feel alright! Yeah, I'm knackered, too of course...but I'm adequately exfoliated and moisturized, so it's all gravy from here on out.

Last night I worked until about 11. Then I did some picture research for my Second Annual New Years Iron On T-Shirt project. Last year's was the cover of the National Enquirer: "Britney Cocaine Tragedy" was the headline. This year it's a toss up between Marc Bolan and Gary Numan.

Or, I might just make some T-shirts and wear something else to Motherfucker.

Wow, it's lucky that this blog is here to keep people abreast of what I'm wearing to various social events. Isn't it.

2003-12-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

No it Really Doesn't Matter at All...
Is it sad that part of me thinks it really cool that Marc Bolan is on my "friendster" list?

I mean, I know it's not really Marc Bolan, y'know, seeing as he's dead and everything...

(When I think about that, it makes me feel a bit emotional.)

But is it sad that I get warm fuzzies over it? Maybe I just think its cool that someone out there made up a profile for Bolan and then is happy to let people friendster him/her. I was also thinking about writing a testimonial but, to be honest, I got too emotional thinking about what to write.

That's really sad!

I may not have mentioned this—or perhaps I have—but I LOVE Marc Bolan. I listen to some T-Rex almost every day. It's not something I talk about a lot, though. Part of the reason I like Supergrass so much—and Gaz Coombes in particular—is that they/he seem like the closest thing going to a modern-day embodiment of Bolan/T-Rex. It's kind of like the torch has been passed to Gaz—although Gaz doesn't have quite the same sartorial flare as Bolan (but the last time I saw them, Gaz did wear a rather loud shirt, so I think he's trying at least!).

Although, I should also say that Supergrass are very much their own animal and aren't riding on the coattails of T-Rex—just in case you were worried!

Well gawd bless them both.

I think I might need to make a special T-shirt for New Years with Marc and Gaz in a Marx & Engels type set-up—Gaz being Engels to Marc's Marx, of course. It's fun to make T-Shirts!

Well, our bathroom plumbing is still fakakta, but the plumber is rumored to be coming over tomorrow morning to sort it out.

2003-12-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

Twas The Night...For Schmanta
As everyone knows by now, I'm a Halfie with Issues (capital I issues, baby! I don't like to skimp). And as you also know, for me, Xmas is a time of ambivalence, woe, inappropriate kvetching, selfishness, and impulse shopping. So far, I just haven't had any of that "Holiday Spirit" they're always talking about on the telly.

Until Now!

Now I am full of delicious Holiday Spirit and it's all on account of the Fat Guy in the Fedora! That's right, kids: I'm talking about Schmanta and his Holiday Nachas*!

What? Who the hell is Schmanta?

Schmanta is the zaftig fellow in the tallit with tinsel tzitzit who climbs up your fire escape on the first night of Hanukkah to eat all the candy canes off your room mate's xmas tree, replacing them with Hanukkah Gelt that he got at a discount because it had a slight "lemony" flavor. Then he heads for the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. After he's had enough nosh, Schmanta comes into your room and leaves matzoh balls in your socks. It doesn't really matter to Schmanta if you've been naughty or nice, because you never call or write and what is he, dead to you..!?

When you wake up the next morning your nostrils fill with the scent of fresh snow on your window ledge and matzoh balls in your sock drawer, and you are immediately struck by how silly you've been acting all month!

Thanks Schmanta! Your special Holiday Nachas brings cheer to us all!

*In some European countries, over the centuries, Holiday Nachas has warped into Holiday Knickers. In France, for example, "Le Schmanta" leaves a pair of lacy underpants at the foot of each child's bed. Tch, the French...

2003-12-08T13:17:00.000-05:00

Hung. Over
I'm actually not at all hung over—no reason to be—except that my boss, "Mr McGee," was joking about my being hung over this morning. Tra la la. Comedy gold, that...

Actually, I was merely very tired and had suddenly come over all famished. So there!

Our bathtub is blocked. I feel bad for all 3 of us! Poor us! I say we mix up another batch of Hillbilly Idol Lemonade or smoke some crack or something until it's fixed.

Other than that, the weekend was fine. We had our party on Friday, which was enjoyable. I was very impressed that people showed up even though a massive snowstorm had just blown in. People even came all the way from Hobbiton (Greenpoint, Brooklyn) which, if you know anything about Hobbits, is quite something.

I got very drunk on my magical slushies. Everyone else (just about) drank the Hillbilly Idol Lemonade. The tree got trimmed at one point; some other stuff happened; music played; people said amusing things to one another; then people left and I went to bed. Top.

Saturday I worked worked worked like the nae mates Anorak that I am. Ah well, it'll be over soon enough.

Sunday, went to the Cohens for dinner and to watch Angels in America. I was very pleased when I learnt that there was actually a part II next week, because the only thing I didn't like about the show was that it ended without really explaining anything. So, if there's a part II, then that explains why it ended right when things were getting really interesting.

What's up with Emma Thompson, though? She's gone a bit "Kenneth Branaugh"—has anyone noticed that!? It's ironic, really.

Well, that's about all I have to report. I'm not really enjoying my lunch today. I chose the wrong kind of salad at the deli. Ah well. Worse things have befallen mankind, I suppose.

Tra la la.

2003-12-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

I'm Not Saying that I'm Not Attracted to Adam Goldberg in his Superman Outfit...
I'm just saying this: my bedroom is freakin' clean and tidy and neat as a friggin' pin, people. I just spent three hours of quality time with my pal Goo Gone: All Purpose Citrus Cleaner and now I feel all orange-y.

Anyway, since the computer is now always ON due to the fantastic awsomeness of the replacement motherboard, I thought I would share the top 20 search requests that resulted in people visiting my blog. Some of them are a little disturbing, some are funny, one (you'll know which one) is downright Joycean, and the rest are all about Nick Valensi YAWN and his equally coma-inspiring girlfriend, Amanda de Cadenet who has done nothing for the last 15 years but date rock stahs and hang out with Courtney Love.

But enough about them. Even writing this paragraph will just generate more search results that contain their names. It's like being in a porn spiral. I wonder what kinds of searches this blog will appear in if I type in the following list of random words:

chaps
horse's willy
dynamo
Uther Pendragon
sauce bottle
Nivea Q10 Wrinkle Control
Doornob
England
Pol Pot
Nancy Regan
Fake Plastic Trees
The Alamo
A Very Nasty Rash
Guatemala
Ironical vs Ironic
Sack
The OC

Right. So anyway, here are the search results:

"so 80s" by Patrick McMullen (Google)
nick valensi %2B astrology (Google) 1
dating + losers + weirdos + psychos (AOL)
nick valensi (Yahoo)
amanda de cadenet nick valensi (Google)
nick valensi anorexic (Google)
Amanda de Cadenet+nick valensi (Yahoo)
nick valensi cadenet (Google)
blog I AND love AND how AND he AND emailed AND me AND photos AND of AND his AND torso, before and after a shaving experiment that left him hairless. How remarkably adorable he is. (Google) 1
Plantae (Google)
cadenet valensi (Google)
seth cohen starter pack christmas gift from the oc (Google)
chanel bag marissa o.c. (Yahoo)
Seth Cohens wardrobe (Google)
chanel marissa the oc (Google)
skinny scarf- knitting instructions (Yahoo)
chapelle "on the wb" chicken (Google)
sodomized children poo (Google) 1
chocolate squidgy cake Bath England (Google)
twinings tea santa barbara (Google)

Righty ho. I'm off for a shower. Then I will begin A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book 8: The Hostile Hospital. I think it takes place in a hospital.

Oh, and earlier this evening, I made two COMICALLY LARGE batches of punch. One is supposed to be a frozen slushy snowball type of thing and it has coconut rum and about four gallons of vodka in it. The other is called—get this!—Hillbilly Idol Lemonade and it has a bottle of yer man Jim "Cheapass" Beam and another 8 gallons of vodka and some lemonade. I tried both and I have to say that, speaking as someone who has not been able to stomach whiskey since about 1991, the Hillbilly Idol Lemonade was really tasty! I guess if you put enough sugary lemonade in your whiskey, eventually it will taste good.

Actually, it's funny because the most horribly sick I've ever been from drinking was from Malibu Rum (on a school trip to Quorn Hall in the lower sixth form) where I drank half a bottle by myself, and then another time from drinking too much whiskey at "Casa Italiana" in Berkeley during Freshman year. Casa was one of many pretentious "theme houses" that were basically student dorms. There was another one called "Chateau" which was a complete shit hole. It was basically a California Governmen-sponsored crack house. Casa Italiana, if I remember, was one of the nicer theme houses—at least it was when I arrived at the party.

Hey, I know! Let's you and me take a stroll down memory lane...

It started really well. I snogged this Spanish exchange student guy named Thomas (but pronounced "Dumbass" with a Spanish accent) who I'd had my eye on since I saw him in the dining commons stealing a loaf of bread. Things were going great until for no reason at all everything started swirling about in an unpleasant fashion. I went outside and stood on the porch and puked right in front of the door. I don't relly know what the cosmic deal was, but this homeless dude suddenly appeared out of knowhere and introduced himself as "Geo." I think he was actually an avatar of Planet Earth, and he was trying to impart some really important wisdom to me, only I was too drunk and busy puking on the doorstep to listen. Shortly thereafter, Geo dematerialized (or possibly just walked away) and I wandered around the side of the house and did some more puking in the bushes. That was where two of my friends found me. I don't really remember anything else after that except waking up the next day back in my dorm room.

Good times...

Oooh! The Malibu Rum story also has an element of drama to it. I was on a school trip with my A Level English class, the purpose of which was to study King Lear in a country setting. So, the night before we were due to perform scenes from the play in front of everyone, I drank the aforementioned half a bottle of Malibu Rum and then woke up the next morning feeling wretched. I kept having to run upstairs to the bathroom in the middle of rehearsals. But, ever the trooper, I pulled it together for the performance and, I'm pretty sure, delighted everybody with my modern-day take on King Lear. I played him as a reactionary Dad with car trouble. Cordelia, of course, was an expert mechanic and ended up fixing my car even though, ironically, I had disowned her earlier in the play for pursuing such a masculine career. Man, it was good drama!

Well. I'm glad I could share this fascinating story with any random person (including my dear Mum) who might be reading this blog.

I should end the story by saying that I have rarely gotten so drunk that I puked or didn't quite remember how I got home (nor have I been in any subsequent performances of King Lear). I did puke earlier this year because I was pretending to be Slash from Guns and Roses and drank half a bottle of wine for dinner and then went out and had about 7 vodka and cokes. I did a lot of puking that night, as poor Twinkle will attest ("Hong Kong Fooey!!!!"). But anyway, generally, these days I have two Bacardi O and diet cokes and I'm ready to go right to sleep.

God, I am so boring!

Well, I'm off to read some more children's literature, then.

2003-12-04T12:31:00.000-05:00

Oops! I Forgot My Outrage...
I guess I was too wrapped up in my OC-related, Moses-themed outrage to remember my Heeb/Time Out New York-based outrage. Thank god S just reminded me...

Basically, this particular outrage can be summed by the following two magazine covers:

TONY on newsstands now

Heeb Issue 3
(published, like, a year ago)

Do you notice anything funny (funny as in "funny-incredible rip-off") about TONY's cover?

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

2003-12-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

The Magic of Joan
Although Summer's fab Wonder Woman outfit almost made up for it, I was kinda bummed to hear Seth Cohen continually mentioning Moses in conjunction with Hanukkah last night on The OC. As far as I know, Moses was not actually involved in any way in the events now known as "Hanukkah." Unless I've fallen into an alternate universe, wasn't it Jonah Maccabee who led the, uh, Maccabees into the sacked temple where the magical oil reserves were found for the hanukkah miracle high jinx? I don't think Moses was anywhere near the place unless he was into time travel as well as mountaineering.

Pfft!

Are, ahem, gentiles so clueless about other religions that Moses is the only Big Jew they've ever heard of? Maybe, because christianity is sort of focused around Jesus (gee, d'ya think?), "they" assume that Jews are just all about Moses 24/7. Maybe the script for last night's otherwise awsome episode originally referred to Jonah Maccebee, but then some guy in marketing piped up with some crap about "No one will know what you're talking about. Best change it to Moses cuz everyone loves Charlton Heston!"

Again, I say pfft!

Either get it right, or don't bloody well mention it at all. Now unsuspecting teens across America will think Moses has something to do with Hanukkah. I'm not sure why this so alarms me, but it does. It would have been so easy to have gotten it right. People get their info from TV, so maybe TV should play up, not down, to its audience. Try assuming that your audience is not completely fucking brain dead and maybe they won't end up that way. Perhaps Seth could have mentioned Jonah Maccabee, rather than Moses, and then Russel-Crowe resembling Ryan could have said "Er, who's that?" and then Seth could have explained, in a self-depricating, indy cred manner, that JM led the Jews agaist the Greeks & Syrians in a kind of civil war, like, a longass time ago, and the story of Hanukkah is all about that time and some magical shit that allegedly happened. And then Ryan could have looked broody and angst-ridden about the Maccabees (and also about Marissa's sudden descent into shoplifting and alcoholism).

See, this is why "people" (i.e. me) get pissed off around this time of year. Hanukkah is not the "Jewish Christmas"—for one thing, Hanukkah is far, far less important in the Jewish Calendar than xmas is to Christians. I don't know if it was Jews reacting to xmas, or Christians clumsily trying to be "inclusive" (blech!), but Hanukkah is not all that important—and yet it's the only Jewish Holiday that any xmas-celebrating types even acknowledge. If you want to be inclusive, how 'bout giving Jews the day off on Yom Kippur but not taking it out of their vacation balance. That's being inclusive. Inventing a fake holiday, basically, so that you can feel like you're "being sensitive to other cultures" is why I get antsy at this time of year.

Also, to add to my ambivalence, the chick in the next cubicle keeps saying "I love Xmas" to anyone who'll listen—I think it's her mantra. She's also got the xmas tunes on the radio, and she keeps singing along. I don't know if you knew this, but pparently, "it's beginning to look a lot like xmas." If she keeps it up, it will begin to look a lot like me vomiting profusely in all directions. But it's hard to give her the ole bug-eye when she's about to have a baby (plus, the cubicle walls between us pevent my giving her even so much as a light slap).

There's no escaping xmas' vice-like grip.

Look, I like my stocking and everything, and I dig figgy pudding and egg nog and chocolate bars in the shape of Jesus or whatever, but I still feel really ambivalent about xmas in general, and every day, some aspect of it either delights or dissapoints me. It's the xmas rollercoaster ride—you know, the one that starts sometime in August and goes all the way through to January 1.

Anyway, back to The OC.

Why, why, why did Seth not choose Summer? The woman dressed up like Wonder Woman for him. Where I live, everyone likes Anna, but to me, that's like saying that you prefer Krystal to Alexis. I'll take the sexy bitch over the nice girl any day of the week! I'll take Alexis, Ginger, Genie's Cousin, and Veronica and we'll form a five-a-side football/ass-kicking team. Anna is blah blah blah boring and she has crappy taste in clothes. Summer, on the other hand, knows where to get a Wonder Woman costume on short notice. That's a skill you have to be born with. It can't be learned from a book or pamphlet. Just because Anna reads a lot and has short hair, it doesn't mean she's better than Summer. I read a lot and it hasn't made me even remotely "good" (quite the opposite, I would say). Summer is evil and deadly in the best tradition of Her Royal Highness, Joan Collins and so we have to like her.

I wish Joan Collins would come to our "Tree Trimming" party this Friday. That would be cool. She's kind of my idol. What am I saying? She is completely my idol—there's no "kind of" about it. Joan = fab. One day, her genius will be recognized and peace & goodwill will reign across the globe. Screw this xmas malarky! I say we celebrate The Magic of Joan this December 25 by donning expensive wigs, getting our nails done, being fabulous, and marrying much younger men!

2003-12-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

Crackin'
I feel like I've been trying to crack a safe for the last month. Things haven't been going well at all; but for some reason (I think it has to do with fixing my desktop), I feel like I've just heard the first click, which as the larcenous know, is the key to breaking into any safe. Once you've got the first cylinder in place, the rest are a piece of cake.

Actually, I have no idea if this is really true. I'm not particularly larcenous, and I've never tried to crack a safe. It just seems like one of those things that ought to be true. Plus, it serves the analogy and this is blogging not thievery.

The point is that I feel as though I have emerged from a place of darkness (and The Darkness) and dispair into the bright sunshine of hope and progress. Well, something along those lines. Things that were tormenting me, seem less insurmountable than before. I'm figuring out new ways to program things—ways that are more simple and elegant than previous ways I was doing them. That's always a really good feeling!

Even xmas is not bothering me as much. I think it's because I had an epiphany just now at the nail salon.

The radio was playing a bunch of xmas songs, and they made me think about how I used to feel about xmas when I was a kid, living in England. There's nothing like xmas in England. Nothing. Sorry, USA, but you just don't quite do it for me. Maybe it's because, over there, it's more about celebrating Winter and school holidays; whereas since I moved here, I've been starved of English Winters and, of course, school holidays. It's probably more about being a child than being in England, but even so, there's something special about "How Things Were" where you grew up versus how they are wherever and whenever you happen to be now.

And then, since moving here (roughly 12 years ago), I've identified more as a Jew than anything else, so when you put all those things together, xmas is not that much fun for me these days.

However, on Monday night S came back from Greenpoint with an xmas stocking she had made especially for me. She made a whole bunch, but mine was the only one that was silver and had a Magen David on it (a "star of David").

I was really touched! I mean, it's always nice when someone makes something for you, but since I had been feeling somewhat oppressed by xmas, it was just really cool to see something personal amid all the tinsel. At the time, I thought "Oh, that's really cool" but since then the stocking has come to represent something fairly important: the fact that whether I "like" it or not, xmas and this whole season is part of my culture and my heritage—just as much as Judiasm is a part of it. That's what being a Halfie is all about. I may identify more with the Jewish part, but there are still some things about "The Holiday Season" that have a lot of meaning—such as when somebody goes to the trouble of making you an xmas stocking.

So, I'm not going to get all mushy or xmas spirited or anything like that, but I am going to take what enjoyment I may from the season and try not to get too hung up on xmas hegemony. Might as well get into it and have a laugh, eh.

Another thing about xmas is that every year, we always had to choose who to spend it with. And since our mum and dad lived a good 6000 miles apart, if you were spending xmas with one parent, it meant you wouldn't see the other one at all. Limited school holidays and all that. So xmas also has this tinge of sadness for me because every year, I had to choose between my parents and there were always parts of my family missing when it came time to celebrate, open presents, and get really really drunk.

I guess I made a decision about 12 years ago that xmas just wasn't worth it. But I think the real issue is that I feel sad that my family isn't a cohesive, "together" unit. Not many people have that, but I seem to know an awful lot of people whose parents are still married and who regularly get together on the holidays. I've gotten to the point where getting together just reminds me of all the people who aren't there, so I tend to avoid that sort of thing.

But I'd really like it. Thanksgiving, for example, was really cool because it was a family. A small one, yes, but there was a mum and a dad together carving up the turkey. I've never had that. Not that my life hasn't been really privilaged or anything. I mean, I'm a lucky person by any measure, so I'm not playing the old violin here! I'm just saying that sometimes it's hard (to which anyone reading this who comes from a similar background will attest) to really get into these holiday times when you know that you won't have that xmas card family thing yourself.

I guess I will have to make my own big family if I want to have that sort of thing—and I think I do want it, because I gravitate toward people from "solid" families (why d'you think I'm always hanging out in Leicester!) because I like that sense of tradition and belonging. Trouble is, you can't glom onto someone else's family gig; and for some reason I can't seem to get my shit together on the "making my own family" front.

So, xmas is hard because it brings out all of the above feelings. I think about the past, I think about the present, I think about the future.

And then, of course, it's cold outside and you think about all the people who are sleeping rough. Then you do a reality check and you realize you've been complaining like a right spoilt git! Boo hoo, so mummy and daddy didn't love each other! Big deal! At least they both loved me.

So, anyway, I'll shut up and stop complaining so much!

Bring on the nog and the nosh!

2003-12-02T18:31:00.000-05:00

Fearment
I am filled with equal amounts of fear and excitement right now. It's because I finally got a new motherboard and I just stuck it in me tower. Here I am, making this blog entry on my actual computer (as opposed to the dreaded laptop).

I'm just waiting for it to all go wrong...I really hope it doesn't! Aaaaaah, etc.

Alright. Nothing else to report. I'm doing a "magazine shoot" (hahahahahaha) tomorrow. It sounds glam, but it's really not very glam. What it is, is a right laugh and hopefully we'll be done in time to watch The OC at 9 o'clock.

It's really nice to have all my shit back: MP3s, CD burner...now I can make a compilation CD to get me to work on time. Top.

2003-12-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

Jacket Potato
I saw Love Actually over the weekend. And what a load of codger's toss it was as well. I cringed all the way through. Frankly, it was embarassing; and it made me feel a bit embarassed about being British. Why? Well, because the movie seemed like it desperately wanted to be an "American-style" romantic comedy, yet at the same time it made a point of saying that the Brits weren't going to kow tow to the horrid horrid yanks.

Oh, really?

Bit of a mixed message there: we want to be just like you, except that we also think we're better than you. We're going to copy the worst elements of your moviemaking techniques and then at the same time accuse you of being crass.

Hmmmm...

The film was full of bits that were really annoying. Like, for example, Billy Bob Thornton as the lecherous American President (the one Hugh Grant "stood up to" oy vey...). He looked like he had no idea what he was doing in the movie in the first place—like he'd wandered in from another movie (presumably, one in which he was playing a racist cop or whatever). And then there was Emma Thompson who wore a series of fumpy jumpers and clearly put a lot of "nuance" into her brief performance because she's a proper "actor" even if she's playing a card-board thin character.

The movie was a series of interconnected stories about love, or something; but there were so many stories that I ended up not really giving a crap about any of them. Also, some of the plots were a bit too similar to other, recent films—like About a Boy to name one.

I think a better stab would have been to focus on just a couple of the stories (Hugh Grant as the floppy-haired PM who falls for Tiffany from Eastenders would have been a good start). This way, the characters and storylines could have been fleshed out a bit more and maybe I would have given a crap or believed any of it.

And that's my review of that!

Clearly, the best thing to happen to moving images in a long, long while is The OC. That's just how it is. There's no arguing with the truth.

Humbugs For Everyone
Xmas has started. Everywhere you go, it's xmas music and tinsel and baubles and whatnot. Xmas was cool when I was a kid. Back then, xmas was all about being off school, making snowmen in the garden, presents, xmas discos at school, cold winter nights, and so forth. It was fun! But now, when I don't belong to that world anymore and haven't "celebrated" xmas in many, many years, it's just a pain in the ass.

I'm not begrudging anyone their xmas jollies. Far from it. It's just not something I really give a crap about, so being surrounded by it for the next month isn't something I'm particularly looking forward to. The worst part is that since just about everyone else is gearing up for it in one way or another, it's pretty much impossible to avoid involvement in it. And you can't really explain this to people without seeming like a complete asshole.

My feelings about xmas are mixed at best. I like the idea of people getting together and celebrating. I like having the day off. But it's this whole being forced part that I don't like. And we really are forced. There are lots of religious festivals throughout the year that come and go without the merest mention. Devali is a really nice Hindu festival but no one expects you to celebrate it unless you're a Hindu. I don't consider myself a christian, and yet people just assume that xmas is on my radar and part of my life. I guess that's what I object to.

I dunno. It's not the worst thing in the world to deal with. I mean, it has its moments. I guess the best analogy is that, to me, xmas is an ex-boyfriend with whom I'm no longer in touch. And I like it that way. Imagine if people kept asking you about your ex-boyfriend and expected you to celebrate his birthday or get all excited cuz he, hmmmm, recently got engaged (just pulling that example out of nowhere heh heh heh). I don't want to have to think about xmas, or about ex boyfriends, or about anything that isn't part of my life. It's very childish of me, I know, but I can't help it.

What I should do is just enjoy the festive aspects of xmas and not worry about whether it's actually kind of offensive.

I'm not saying that I'll never celebrate it again or that I'll never allow an xmas tree in my home or anything. But right now, though it's the last thing I really care about, the whole economy is on this xmas trajectory now and I basically have no choice but to go along with the flow until January when things calm down.

So, in the spirit of xmas ambivalence I say, "Bah Humbug to All"!

2003-11-28T20:31:00.000-05:00

Stuffed
Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving, everybody!
I celebrated the holiday in beautiful Teaneck, New Jersey where I enjoyed good food and excellent company. I made a peach and summer fruits crumble and, with obiwan input from Mrs C., it came out really well! It didn't taste bad or hurt anyone!!!

I just spent the last, um, several hours trying to fix D'cifer's computer. Fingers crossed and all the rest of it. We had a lovely lunch, ate some really amazing ice cream from (shit, what was it called?) Emack & Something on 7th Ave and 15th (the counter guy flirted with D'cifer so let's hope D'cifer will do what needs to be done and there'll be free ice cream for everybody! Hurrah!). Anyway, they had an array of really cool flavors and they had soup as well, for some reason...

The problem with noshing is that right after you're bouncing around the room on a sugar high. I doubt anyone watching would have found any of our jokes quite as funny as we did, but never mind! By the time we were halfway through the drive defrag, we'd both crashed so I said later, Dude and galumphed home in the rain.

I could have sworn the blog dictionary (see sidebar link) had a definition for this: pilfering ideas/text from other people's blogs to use as a springboard for your own blog. Maybe I'm imagining it, but anyway, I'm going to commit blodgerism (blog plagiarism) by taking Expecting to Fly's "Friday Five" and answering them myself, since it is Friday and, instead of, oh, going out for a lovely time with my "boyfriend" or a lovelyfriend whom I have called up on the phone and made plans with (what a concept!), I am opting to stay in for yet another weekend of the Dreaded Freelance. I'm so close to being done with everything, that I just want to get to that point where it's done and everyone is smiling and feeling good.

And when it's all over and done with, I'm going to go out and tie one on like nobody's business. I'm going get really drunk and snog a bunch of people I don't even know and then I'm going to do "Livin' on a Prayer" at some Karaoke place as my finale.

Anyway, so here's my version of EtF's Friday Five (it's about shopping, so it's right up my alley, so to speak):

1. Do you like to shop? Why or why not?
I like to shop at certain times. Sometimes it's the very last thing I want to do; but when I'm in the mood to shop and I'm buying something either that I really need (and know will make my life more convenient in some small way) or something that I just want and that I will enjoy having, then shopping is really fun.

2. What was the last thing you purchased?
Agent Provocateur au de parfum.

3. Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?
I like to shop in a store when the thing I'm buying has some sensual element to it (taste, smell, touch, etc.) because then it's fun to sample—or if I'm buying clothes then I have to try them on, obviously; but if I'm buying books or music then it's nice to buy them online and save some money!

4. Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?
Twenty pounds a month. But I used to save my dinner money as well and add that.

5. What was the last thing you regret purchasing?
These really awful boots that I just hate and can't believe I paid money for. Never shop under pressure.

2003-11-26T12:05:00.000-05:00

Check out Clay Sails' Blog Dictionary (or Blogtionary). It's quite funny.

I'm going to add "Smorgasblog" as the definition of the list of "Other Blogs I read" that you see on Blogs (including this one).

While submitting "Smorgasblog" to the Blogtionary, I came up with a new snippet of Mockney Rhyming Slang: Tony Blair = Flair (or flare if you prefer).

As in

"Phew, those cords from The Gap have a bit too much Tony Blair in the leg for my tastes."

2003-11-25T14:00:00.000-05:00

Lost Bread
I'm flippin' sorted right now! It's because I am looking at the business end of a plate that has four different kinds of cake on it—one small slice of each. It's a Smorgascake—a smorgasm of cakeliness. And furthermore, I have also just invented two wholly new portmanteau words: smorgasm [smorgasboard + orgasm], meaning "a pleasurable feeling brought on by having lots of things"; and cakeliness [cake + loveliness], meaning of course, "the inherant loveliness of cakes."

That's good work—sociolinguistically speaking. It's only Tuesday after all.

This morning I was woken, once again, at 5:45. Even though I had to get up early anyway, I was still annoyed because I didn't get to sleep until about half past one last night—and that was only after I went and had half a mug of TheraFlu, to which I now realize I am completely addicted...

It worries me because who the hell knows what's really in TheraFlu anyway? Sure, you can read the ingredients, but maybe they leave some stuff out—like whatever highly addictive shit is in there that makes it now impossible for me to sleep unless I've had at least half a sachet's worth.

It's a problem. Well, I mean, actually it isn't really a problem at all unless you find addiction problematic. Everybody's addicted in some way to something. Everybody's got something that they have to have, like coffee for instance, to make it through the day. So, being addicted to lemon-flavored nighttime cold medicine sachets is hardly the worst scenario ever conceived. It's just that if I run out of TheraFlu—or if it is banned by the FDA after they figure out what's really in it—my life will start to suck in new and terrifying ways, and that's not good.

Well, as me Mum would say, "Never mind, you've got another one."

Oh, I should mention what the four different kinds of cake were (I've finished them now). Let's see, there was an ice cream cake (chocolate and vanilla with cookie sprinkles), a pumpkin pie (not technically a "cake", I know, but it's all Cake when you get down to it—I mean, ice cream isn't cake either, but it's circular and comes in slices), a slice of a giant cake-shaped Brownie, and a slice of Cheesecake.

Right.

Back to the getting up part of the story. So, I got up at about 6:15 after snoozing for a bit. I left the house at 7:30, picked up a bunch of flowers, and headed toward the 6 train. I don't know why I left so early, but I got to City Hall a good 45 minutes before I was due to meet everybody so I went and sat in StarFucks, which is something I wouldn't normally do, but it was very cold and windy and I was wearing a stylish-yet-flimsy coat. Yes, I suffer for style! But that's the only thing I'll suffer for dammit!

So, I sat in StarFucks for a while and then headed back to City Hall where I met my brother S, my sister J, MrJ, and D'Cifer. Can you guess why, children?

Let's see, a group of people meeting at City Hall early in the morning...

That's right, J and MrJ were there to get married! S and I were there to be witnesses and D'Cifer was there, well, because it would have been inconceivable for him not to have been there. Also, D'cifer was acting as Ring Bearer (don't worry, I made the necessary double entendres even though it was bitterly cold and quite early in the morning for jokes).

Getting married (or, rather, attending someone else's wedding) at City Hall is kind of cool—apart from all the waiting around, that is. Apparently, you have to wait exactly 24 hours between getting the license, and paying for the ceremony, so although we got there at 8:30, they couldn't pay and get in line for the chapel until 8:59. Er, ok...

So finally, MrJ paid the dude, everybody signed the license, and then we had to wait in yet another line to actually go into the chapel.

Once inside, the whole thing took about 30 seconds. D'Cifer's Ring Bearing was flawlessly executed. I held J's coat (actually, I held it and then put it on a window ledge because I'm not a damn coatrack...). Meanwhile, S lurked to one side—which he can do with ease now that he has grown a beard.

Never in my life have I attended such an alactritous wedding ceremony. The only downer was that the Justice's performance lacked vim. They should replace her with an animatronic giraffe (for the kids) because that would do just as well.

There were no vows or any of that "love and obey" "till death do us part" mumbo jumbo. It was more along the lines of: "'Ere, d'you wanna to marry this chick, or what?" "yeah, I do" "Oi, d'you wanna marry this dude, or what?" "Yeah, go on, then" but the JP did say "You may now kiss the bride" at the end—at which point there ensued a shocking display of lewdness that standards of modesty prevent me from describing any further save to say that it kinda put me off my breakfast a little...

Speaking of breakfast, we went out for some after the ceremony. By then everybody was desperately in need of coffee (to take the edge off the TheraFlu). We went to some Belgian joint where some people ate Waffles but where I had French Toast, which they called Pain Perdu ("lost bread"). I don't know why they called it that, but it sounded kinda cool! They say you're not supposed to mix alliteration with carbohydrates, but I figured it was a special occasion, so why not.

And that's that.

I wonder if I will ever get married? I'll probably marry someone who is in jail, or in a mental asylum, or in a mental asylum that is also a jail—that's where my tastes seem to lean. The problem with only ever being attracted to sociopaths, psychos, nutjobs, weirdos, and losers is that it inevitably goes pear shaped and you're left with nothing to show for your troubles but a bruised heart and the feeling that you really ought to have known better.

Ack. I don't know why I'm complaining. I've still got my fabulous good looks to carry me through the difficult times. As the Monkeyman once said (or rather, sang), "[My] Star will shine again one day..."

But anyway, let me finish by saying Mazel Tov to J and MrJ! You = Fab.

2003-11-24T15:57:00.000-05:00

It's Fully Operational!
Today we launched the new Heeb Magazine website.

It's been a long time in the making. Thanks to:
Josh Neuman
Jessica Honikman
Gary Frenkel
And everyone else involved!

I was updating my calendar and I saw that it was exactly one year ago tonight that we saw Soft Cell at the Roxy. That was an amazing show! It reminds me that I haven't been to any gigs lately. I really want to see The Darkness but I think I just missed them. I did get a mailing from Satanicide today about an upcoming Brooklyn gig, so I must get on that before it sells out.

At lunch I met S at Bombay Beauty where some awsome Indian women threaded our eyebrows. It was even better and more enjoyable than waxing. These women were so fast and so good it's no wonder they have such good reviews posted in the window. I sat down, listened to some bangra music, and about 43 seconds later, I was done. And apart from a little redness that went away after about an hour, that was that.

Genius.

But you know what, a culture that comes up with the Big Bang theory a good 5000 years before Stephen Hawking was even a glint in the milkman's eye (I've said this before—in this blog and also out loud to anyone who'll listen...) is bound to have come up with a lot of other cool stuff as well. It's no wonder that the people of the Indus River Valley came up with a quick and painless method of hair removal thousands of years before the Euros (or whoever it was) had the "brilliant" idea of scraping sharp metal blades across their skin, risking death and infection, only to achieve far less effective results.

I'm just sayin'...

Aaaanyway, Just now, someone in the ladies loo flung the stall door open and smashed it right into me as I was walking by. OUCH! I now have a sizable welt on my right hand. Typing this blog is quite painful, actually. Maybe I should save my strength for actual work! Damn, it really hurts! It'sright on the tendon of my forefinger.

Something really cool is happening tomorrow! But I can't tell you about it now. You'll just have to wait.

Well, I have a lot to do so I'll get back to it.

2003-11-24T10:17:00.000-05:00

I had a weekend that was almost entirely composed of freelance work. This was good, because there was a lot that needed doing—and most of it actually got done.

Unfortunately, at one point, I kinda lost my marbles a little. But I think most of them are back now. I think...

On Sunday, I went outside for several hours to take care of some errands. I remember, when we lived in Miami, one time my best friend Nicole invited me to go and "run some errands" with her and her mother (the very glamourous, night-time soap star resembling, "Mrs Palizzi"). "Running errands" was not something we did in England (well, we did, but we called it "popping into Oadby" which meant "driving into the central shopping area of Oadby village and going to various shops to pick up various supplies, as needed."), so I had no idea what it meant to "run some errands." I was really excited when I got invited to go with them on this mysterious adventure. As it turned out, we were just going to the dry cleaners and the grocery store—but Mrs Palizzi made it seem glamourous in a Joan Collins-y way to pick up some slacks and then go to Winn Dixie to buy milk.

For my errands, I went to Sephora to buy a new perfume. Since I got back from England, I've been alternating between Sp^aceNK Woman, Sensei, and So De La Renta, but the problem is that I've been wearing them during the day, to work, which means that when I go out I feel, olfactorially, like I'm going to the office. I needed a completely separate smell for the times when I'm not at work.

The plan was to find a completely new smell from the vast and giddy array of smell options at Sephora. I thought maybe I'd try the new Stella McCartney smell, which is called "English Rose," but although I liked the packaging a lot, I didn't like the smell. Then I thought "Go classic!" so I went to the Chanel section and tried a few of them. The problem is that I associate Chanel with my late step-grandmother, so I couldn't really get behind any of the Chanel smells—even Allure, which smells the least Chanel-y of the bunch.

So, inevitably, I gravitated toward the Givenchys. In the past, I've worn Ysatis and Amarige, both while I lived in California. I've stayed away from Givenchy since I moved because I was worried that I would associate the smells with living in California and not being very happy with my life. But I think some perfume ranges just suit certain people. Some people are Chanel types, some people are Calvin Kleiners, some people are Ralph Lauren, or Gucci smellees. I guess I'm a Givenchy smellee ("smellee" meaning "one who gravitates toward the smell of" even though I just made the word up!). Then I had the bright idea that I should just choose something form the Givenchy range that I hadn't worn before and then I would achieve both a "new" smell whilst remaining within the general family of smells that I most enjoy.

So, I tried Organza, Interdit, Fleur d'Interdit, and Extravagance, but something about the old fave, Ysatis kept drawing me back. I wasn't reminded of anything in particular when I smelled it. It didn't make me feel anything in particular except olfactory enjoyment. Yet I was still really reluctant in case, at some later time, I found myself enveloped in unpleasant memories in the middle of a dinner party or something...So like a complete lameass, I walked around the store, smelling the different parts of myself where I'd sprayed different perfumes to see how the different notes interacted with my body chemistry. Then I decieded that I should go with Organza, even though I secretly wanted the Ysatis.

So then ensued half an hour of me switching back and forth between the two. I kept switching the bottles in my basket and I know this must have seemed odd because at one point a sales clerk started tailing me and then actually stopped me and asked if I needed help. I think he meant, "In a general sense" rather than with my perfume selection. Then we started talking about my coat:

Sales Dude: Wow, I like your coat.
Me: Thanks.
Sales Dude: It's really unique.
Me: Thanks, I think it kinda looks like Willy Wonka.
Sales Dude: [Not sure what to say] Willy Wonka...!? Do you like Willy Wonka?
Me: Well, of course. Who doesn't?

In case you're wondering: Yes, this is a very typical Jo-style interaction—one in which Jo confounds and confuses a total stranger for no other reason than that she can't seem to prevent herself from doing it. All the tell-tale signs were present in this interaction: non-sequetorial statements, confusing declarations, off-topic interjections...

This trait was, I believe, inhereted from my Father because my Mother always says the exact right thing in any situation. I used to get very embarassed when my Dad would confuse and confound complete strangers (usually sales clerks), but now I find that I am worse than he is! Oy...

Y'know, it's really true what they say on TV! We spend so much time worrying that we're turning into our mothers that we completely overlook the fact that we have already turned into our fathers.

Anyway, back to Sephora. After walking away from the perplexed Sales Dude, I wandered around for a while smelling myself in various different aisles. Finally, I thought "Jo, you are being a right 'narner!" and just picked up the Ysatis and headed for the checkout. I think it's time to reclaim certain things that I've been avoiding for the past few years, and one very important thing is SMELL.

After Sephora, I walked up Broadway and popped into Shakespeare's to buy two more A Series of Unfortunate Events books. It's funny how there's always a bookstore called "Shakespeare's." Pick any town in the USA and it will have a bookstore with this name.

So, that was my weekend. Not very exciting. I didn't go out except to Sephora and Shakespeare's.

The good news is that we are very close to launching Heeb Mk II. We're inching closer and closer every day...

2003-11-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

Shoe
Yesterday afternoon, I behaved like a pair of flip flops, flipping and flopping around on the issue of Whether or not to Go Out. Poor S was on the receiving end of all the flip-floppery. Luckily (for me), my final flip was for Going Out, so we went out.

Where did you go? a Nation asks in wonder.

Well, the original plan was to go to the Marimekko event, but then it was brought to S's attention that there were several other events that were much closer to our house (and closer to each other) and that there would be FOOD and free booze at at least two of them. So we ditched Marimekko and went first instead to The Countainer Store pre-opening party, and then to Patrick McMullen's So 80s pre-exhibition party (it's always "pre" with these things) at what used to be The Limelight but is now, incomprehensibly, Avalon. "Avalon"? Yuck!

I never actually went to the Limelight when it was The Limelight, but I know a lot of people who used to hang out there "Back in the Day." I've also seen Party Monster, although it was crap. J thought it was "alright" but that was perhaps more a response to me saying "God, that was crap!" than her actually thinking it was truly "Alright."

Where was I?

I tend to get lost easily. It happens. This week I've poured so much cold medication into myself that I don't really know what's going on. Last night I didn't take anything and, of course, I lay awake half the night and eventually switched on the light and did some knitting. I was also a little tipsy. Oh, and I read "book the third" in A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Wide Window. The joke of course is that all the adults in the book—and by extension, in the entire world—are stupid (and you know, we really are) because every time Count Olaf shows up in "disguise" none of the adults will believe its him (Aunt Josephine: "But his business card says his name is Captain Sham—that proves he's not Count Olaf" Genius!) until the children have amassed an incredible amount of evidence in proof thereof. Even though Count Olaf comes up with the most flimsy disguises ever conceived. You really should read these books, they're so much fun! I don't think I can cope any more with books aimed at adults. Since I turned 30, I've just lost it. I don't even know what "it" is, but it's gone, whatever it was...

Oh fuck. I've lost my train of thought again.

Ah, last night. So, we went to the not-yet-open The Container Store on 6th ave and ate more food than anyone has a right to eat, really. And apparently all this rampant eating and drinking is somehow linked to curing AIDS. They had so much nosh! And the best part is that I got to experience dessert in the way that giants experience it! Finally! It is so important, as you go through life, to understand how other people experience things so as not to take those things (or any things) for granted. You've got to walk a mile in a pair of uncomfortable shoes to understand what makes the caged bird sing—you know the adage.

See, you and I, being of normal stature one assumes—although you could be really tall, or perhaps wide—see a cheesecake and think, "Oooh, there's a cheesecake, let's all have a slice!" A giant, on the other hand, sees the same cheesecake and is immediately struck by how small it is. To a giant, a lovely big cake is nothing more than a morsel—albeit a delicious one. Imagine if every time you saw something delicious, you knew that you could only have one tiny bite of it!

Ha! Ruminate on that for a moment.

That's how giants have to live in our world. And in their world, I'm told, they don't even have cakes.

At the Container Store, all the cheesecakes and so forth were bite-size, tiny little things that you could (if you were uncouth, as I apparently am) shove in your gob and eat in one bite.

That's how giants feel all the time. So think about that the next time you're blithely slicing up a cake and handing out pieces to all your spoiled, chi chi friends! Giants don't get to do that, unless they bake special giant-sized cakes, which is impossible anyway! The Laws of Physics are not open to negotiation...

I'm actually very bad at cooking anything at all. Don't be shocked! Everyone is bad at something, even me! I'm really good at everything else, of course. Cookery is my Achilles Heel. So is the squidgy bit in back of my ankle. If anything's going to bring me down, it'll be being forced to cook someone their dinner—especially if it's at gunpoint because I'll be doubly nervous and more prone to cock-ups. Even when there's very little pressure involved, I usually forget to turn the oven on, or to put the eggs in. Sometimes I get Olive Oil and vegetable oil mixed up and everyone gets the runs. I usually fry the parts that are supposed to be boiled, and boil the parts that are supposed to be baked.

And I'm sorry, but I don't think "It's the thought that counts." There's nothing worse than a "thought that counts" when you were expecting a "dinner that you could digest."

Listen bub, if your cake is bad, then there's nothing anyone can do or say that will help. You have to chuck it in the bin and go out and buy a proper cake, preferably from the Magnolia Bakery. If you try to give someone a bad cake, then you obviously don't really like that person as much as you think you do. Otherwise why would you want them to eat the roughly cake-shaped piece of crap you have thrown together?

That's like doing a big turd and giving to someone for Hanukkah.

It's just not right.

Anyway, getting back to our evening. We filled up on tiny cakes, ate some cookies that looked, respectively, like a Yellow Taxi Cab, an Apple, and the I ♥ NY logo. Yum! Then I ate some inside-out chocolate profiteroles and drank two glasses of champagne.

Next up we went over to the Limelight and had a schmie around while everyone was still arriving. Slowly, the club began to fill with people who had clearly looked really good circa 1985 but were not looking too hot in the here-and-now. It can happen if you don't watch it. Either you stop doing the drugs or you start doing the drugs. Either way, the sudden change of lifestyle has the same basic effect as when all the Nazis looked into the Ark. It's not pretty. I, of course, have managed to stem the Tides of Time quite brilliantly with a secret formula consisting of fourteen different kinds of moisturizer mixed together and applied hourly by Felix, the part-time houseboy I found on CraigsList.

Meanwhile, back at the Limelight: we walked around, ate some more food, hung out in The Tootsie Roll Room (where I drank a strange blue cocktail that tasted like a lime—probably because it had a lime in it, which is good because the English are prone to scurvey and need a steady supply of limes to stay alive). Then we were ready to go home and do some knitting. You know what they say: Live fast, Knit Hats.

I've done it again. Forgotten what I was saying.

Perhaps it wasn't very interesting, then

Hmm, I daresay you're right.

Talk about the giftbags or something

Ack, giftbags.... They were ok. The real gift, of course, is all the free booze and tiny cakes, but you can't leave empty handed, so at The Container Store I got an umbrella, and at The Patrick McMullen Thing I got a Kodak plaggy bag filled with flyers, magazines, rolls of film, and (inexplicably) a bottle of gold nail polish. Well, it must have made sense to someone at one point.

And that's about it. The best part of the evening was just hanging out with S who continues to surprise and delight me with her awsomeness and right-on ways. And I'm not just saying that because she keeps hooking me up with free booze and tiny cakes (although that is certainly an enhancing factor).

2003-11-19T19:34:00.000-05:00

Ok, I am now into (hooked on, more like) Lemony Snicket and his A Series of Unfortunate Events uh, series. The best part is that all the books are short and each one takes about 45 minutes to read.

Perfect! My brain has shriveled to the point where the only literature I can handle is children's books written by succinct phantoms. I say "phantom" because, as you know, Lemony Snicket isn't really real.

Not many people are, I find.

I am really fucking stressed at the moment. I can't sleep (without sedative assistance), I can't eat (anything except TONS of chocolate), and I can't remember important words like "Doornob"—wait, that's not the word I was trying to remember! See, I told you!

Catnip.

No. That's not it either...

Damn.

Anyway, never mind all that. Back to Lemony Snicket. I'd like to know who Lemony Snicket really is. Now that I've spent all that money on his (or her?) books, I'm poor. Perhaps the "real" Lemony Snicket will lend me money to buy sweets.

2003-11-18T14:03:00.000-05:00

Tale of a Jumbo Prawn
I was casually eating my lunch just now when it occurred to me that the tail of a jumbo prawn is not supposed to consist of the same material as the body of a jumbo prawn, which led me to the conclusion that what I had been eating was not, in fact, a jumbo prawn at all but some sort of fake jumbo prawnmeat fashioned to resemble a jumbo prawn but probably made from some bottom-feeding deepsea species that may or may not be technically edible.

It's probably a deepsea fungus, harvested exclusively by owner-operated delis across the tri-state area.

Well, it tasted pretty good all the same.

2003-11-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

Knackered
I am knackered. On Saturday I helped some friends paint their apartment. It was fun; but the problem with painting large areas of wall is that it starts out being a right laugh, but 5 hours later you just want to curl up on the settee and hibernate. It was very, very cold out in Greenpoint as well, which didn't help either!

We were done by about 6 so we ate some nosh and then I went home. The plan was to have a "nice bath" (I may have mentioned that, to my ongoing delight, my mother never refers to just having a "bath"—it's always, a "nice bath," or rather, a nicebath) but instead I watched Holes on pay per view. Then I couldn't sleep and blah blah blah, I went to bed at about 2.

Then, on Sunday, I woke up late and went over to J's to put the finishing touches on Heeb Mk II, which will be launching this week! Then we watched Ghost Ship which was entertaining but crappy. Then I went home and watched the season finale of The Office. I have to say that I was gutted when Dawn said no to Tim. It was heartwrenching! How come nobody (i.e. A) warned me about this?

I was hoping that those two crazy kids would finally get it together. But alas...

Maybe in the Christmas special???

So, that's it. Pretty uneventful weekend come to think of it. There were no drunken dramas; but that's probably a good thing.

I just booked a ticket out to LA/Santa Barbara for the beginning of Hanukkah/Chanukah/Nanook/Chandelier, which I will be spending with parts of the fam in the CA sunshine. I'm still ambivalent about the West Coast, for many many reasons...but I'm looking forward to seeing my Dad's new house. It seems, they liquidated their original house and used it to buy five smaller houses (3 of which are in Las Vegas) that they rent out. This seems like a good plan, to me. Especially since we all know (from reading Gone With the Wind) that "Land's the only thing that matters, Scarlet!"

Personally, I have zero equity. I do have some rather nice pez dispensers that I'm hoping to sell on eBay for a tidy profit when I'm 50. That's my retirement plan.

Actually, my retirement plan is to work until I drop dead. And if I can drop dead during one of our Friday staff meetings, so much the better.

Anyway, I was talking about going to LA/Santa Barbara. I say "LA/Santa Barbara" because the plan is to spend Thursday night in LA visiting with my lil sister MissJ. It gets very confusing when everyone (apart from my brother) has a name that starts with J. There's me, J_____ (Me,I), my sister J______ (J), her fiance, J_____ (MrJ), and my little sister, J_________ (MissJ). Then there are various cousins and other J type people, but they don't seem to get a lot of real estate in this blog.

Anyway, MissJ used to be very small. Then suddenly, out of the blue, she grew up into this really cool woman who does stand up comedy with the Groundlings in LA. I hope she won't mind me talking about her like that in this blog, but I believe it's the older sister's prerogative to brag about the accomplishments of the littler one!

MissJ attended my alma mata for a while (UC Berkeley) but transferred to UCLA to enroll in some swanky theatre program. She also works part time for an Ad agency and teaches Hebrew to the littluns at one or more shuls in the LA area.

When I was her age, I worked part time at a record store where everyone thought I was a weirdo.

MissJ has got her sh*t together. I'm not saying she's "perfect" (although, again, it's the big sister's prerogative to say things like "My little sister is perfect") but she seems to have her feet on the ground.

("With your feet in the air and your head on the ground...")

OK. The coffee seems to be kicking in. That's good!

I'm feeling very philosophical today. It's the result of Monday tiredness. Yesterday was one of those cold days where everything seems eerily quiet. Both my room mates were out of the apartment, too, so that lent another layer of quiet. I've been hanging out with my own thoughts. It happens!

The current weather lends itself to introspection. You have to wrap yourself up in layers of sweaters, coats, hats, and scarves until you're just a pair of eyes peeking out of a big mass of different fabics. Also, I took cold medicine with my TheraFlu last night, so I'm still a bit groggy right now.

But I always am on Mondays.

Well, I just found out that we are launching Heeb tonight! That's one thing to cross off the list. Top!

Right. Time to get on with it.

2003-11-14T12:20:00.000-05:00

Red Bull
Hi.

So, I just found sugar free red bull at the deli. I bought a can because I have a staff meeting (a 2 hour staff meeting) at 1 and I feel like I'm about to fall asleep.

The problem, though, is that the last time I had red bull it gave me the giggles like you wouldn't believe.

A lot of things seem to give me the giggles.

When I worked for Luminant, we were on-site at a company called mPower (now defunct, of course) in the Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco. Every afternoon, at 4PM, I would be gripped with a giggle attack. You could set your watch by it. Every day at 4, for no discernable reason, I would start to giggle uncontrollably, for about 20 minutes. I think everybody thought I was mental. I suspect it had something to do with the crappy ventilation in the building, or the fact that it was dangerously near a large electricity pylon.

Luckily, in the "dot com" world, being mental was okay—actually it was encouraged. They also expected you to work 18 hours a day for reasons I have yet to fully comprehend...

Anyway, after mPower ended, so did the giggle fits—that is, until the arrival into my life of Red Bull.

Now, usually, my Red Bull has a decent amount of vodka in it, so it might be the combination of alcohol + sugar that sets me off; but I don't know. Maybe there's something in Red Bull that causes giggle fits, even if it's sugar free. Let's hope I laugh my way through the staff meeting, eh? It would in no way be highly frowned upon.

Red Bull tastes kind of weird. Actually it tastes like the cough medicine we used to have when we were small. If you had a cough or a sore throat, mum would pile you into the citroen 2CV (named Larry) and take you to see Dr. Mina or Dr. Lloyd-Evans, depending on who was available. When it was your turn, he (Mina) or she (Lloyd-Evans) would take a quick look down your throat with a large emory board and then write you a prescription for Cough Medicine (or maybe it was just an early Red Bull prototype). Come to think of it, even if you didn't have a cough or sore throat, you still got a prescription for cough medicine. I think when I broke my arm, they gave me that cough medicine and told me, "Cheer up, you've got another arm."

Anyway, Dr. Mina was a little odd. He would always always ask you about your poo—whether or not it was relevant (I guess he thought it was always relevant).

"Have you had a bowel movement?" he would ask.

Now, when I was small, I didn't know that "having a bowel movement" actually meant Doing a Poo and so I always answered "no" because I didn't think my "bowel" had gone anywhere. As far as I knew, it was in the same place it always was (not that I had any idea where that might be).

This explains why Dr. Mina told my mother he though I might be chronically constipated.

Anyway, I'd better finish my Red Bull before the meeting gets underway. Wish me luck!

2003-11-14T10:17:00.000-05:00

"Either He's Dead or My Watch Has Stopped"
It is cold around here! I almost got blown over crossing Mercer this morning. I had to wrap about eight scarves around me noggin—luckily, with all the knitting, I had more than enough scarves for the job.

I listened to Marquee Moon on the way to work. I had forgotten how good it is. I borrowed it once from D, waaaaay back in the Day and now "they" have reissued it, so I bought it yesterday.

McNulty asked about Michelle Branch. Well, I don't have much to say about her. She seems alright. Her music is bland, like 99% of music "out there." At least she writes it herself, though. I get her confused with the other dark-haired, equally earnest one. There are two dark haired chicks, one plays the piano and the other one plays the guitar. Which one is Michelle Branch? One of them is called Vanessa something. And I think one (or both) of them is dating the lead singer of that awful, awful travesty known as Third Eye Blind. I learned that on the MTV. I don't know which one is going out with him, but as long as he can tell them apart I suppose it really doesn't make much difference.

It's none of my beeswax.

I will say this, however: I like Christina Aguilera. I don't like her music, or even her really. I just liked the Versace ads she did and I think she's a smidge more interesting than your Britney Spears/Mandy Moore/Jessica Simpson/Etc. types. I don't like Pink, though. She is atrocious!

This weekend, I'm going to help some people paint their apartment. I do love the smell of paint!

That is basically the sum total of what I have to say today.

Hey, it's Friday!

For the last four nights, I have been taking a TheraFly/Excedrine PM cocktail just before bed. Man! I could so easily get hooked on valium. What a feeling...It's like being dragged down into sleep. Normally, I have to force myself into that state by trying to push out all the stressful thoughts that crowd my brain. With the sleeping draught, you just surrender to the drugs and away you go. It's fantastic! TheraFlu tastes pretty bad, but it's well worth it! Oy. It's even better than Actifed, which was my nightcap for several years before I stumbled upon the TheraFlu/Excedrine PM mix.

I do feel a bit groggy, though. Hmmmm...

2003-11-12T16:46:00.000-05:00

Hubcap Diamond Star Halo
I have something to get off my chest.

I freakin' hate Jewel!

Phew. I feel a little better.

I have nothing against her as a person, but as an "artist" I find her completely and utterly excrutiating. Before she went all teeny bopper (?) in an attempt to make loads of cash—oh, no, I'm sorry, I forgot that she was just poking fun at teeny boppers, cuz she's so real and authentic and she used to live in a van or whatever...

Bah. Where was I? Oh, yeah, so before she started wearing make-up and short skirts she was all about being a sensitive singer-songwriter. Except that her song writing is some of the worst crap I have ever heard in my life. I remember being forced to listen to a Jewel album when I lived in Berkeley and it was nauseating. Her music is the kind of music that dudes listen to because they think it makes them deeply sensitive and in touch with their emotions. Feh! I've no truck with that sort of thing, if it's your bag, but why Jewel? Oh, right, she's got big tits.

And why any of the womenfolk can stomach her vagina warbling is beyond me. I guess I'm missing something but Jewel is by all accounts a talentless hack who has thoroughly let the side down.

I had to listen to an entire Jewel song today as I fetched up my salad at the local deli. They always have the worst music there. No wonder my tummy feels rum, having to listen to Jewel warbling in my ear while I'm trying to digest some hardboiled eggs.

I just really cannot stand her. Every time I see her or hear her I feel like punching someone (viz. her).

And that's really all I wanted to say.

2003-11-12T09:20:00.000-05:00

Fluffy Pink Mobius Strip
For reasons unknown, I stayed awake until 2:30 last night knitting. It's like a compulsion—a knitting binge. Sadly, it was all for nothing because instead of a nice hat, I ended up with a fluffy pink mobius strip. It seems the initial row got twisted (I wasn't paying attention, clearly), and it wasn't until I'd finished an entire roll of yarn that I realized the whole thing had a twist in it.

If I had set out to make a fluffy pink mobius strip then the endeavour would have been a major success. However, I wanted a hat...

I'm going to find a recipe (or pattern, I suppose) somewhere on the InterWeb so that I won't waste any more time.

It's hard to describe the whole knitting compulsion. Of course, being me, I have to attribute it to one or more of my neuroses, otherwise there's no point. It can't just be a case of knitting for knitting's sake. Oh, no! I'm sublimating, must be. But sublimating what? The obvious answer is sex, but that seems a bit cliche, so I will reject it in favor of continuing the search for an answer. Meanwhile, I will make a matching hat and scarf combo for every coat and jacket in my wardrobe.

Like I say, some addictions are actually quite productive!

Training
I have a training session from 10 to 12 today. I like them because I feel so isolated generally here in my cubicle-at-the-end-of-the-world, and the training sessions give me the opportunity to trade sassy one-liners with my co-workers—most of whom are sassy women aged between 27 and 50. As you can imagine, that's a lot of sass!

The training session itself deals with something or other to do with benefits, but really, it's all about the sassiness. I'm worried that today I will be unable to bring the sass on account of lack of sleep. Alarm Bitch did indeed wake me up at 5:45 this morning, but she has taken to switching the alarm off right after it goes off. What I don't really understand about this is that the problem isn't the alarm staying on so much as the fact that when it comes on, it's bloody loud. I think it's coming from the apartment right next to mine, though, because there was some weird noise in the wall happening right after the alarm went off. Maybe I should pin a note on a stick and tap on her window.

I imagine Alarm Bitch to be a youngish NYU student. A lot of the time, students are incredibly moronic. The reason, I think, is that their young minds cannot cope with learning and thinking. Also, they're probably fresh from the farm or whatever and have no idea how to behave around other people. And since all their little student friends wake up at 5:45 as well (for O Chem, most probably), they don't realize that not everyone has a college student's schedule.

It's really annoying. And the funny thing is that during the Summer, this same apartment building kept me awake till the early hours of the morning and there was one (loud, obnoxious) voice in particular whose owner I dreamed of garotting with a length of piano wire. Again, it's this student mentality: "It's the Summer, isn't everyone like, y'know, on a three month vacation!? Let's stay up till 4 on a Wednesday night!"

Well, I think I'm going to have to talk to her and explain a few things. I just need to figure out the apartment number.

2003-11-11T14:17:00.000-05:00

Weird Sisters
I've just returned from "The Yarn Connection" which is the nearest knitting supply store cum wiccan coven to my office. I'm beginning to realize that the World of Knitting may not have much in common with the World of Things Not Relating to Knitting.

First, I couldn't just walk into the store. I had to get buzzed in. They seemed to know that it was me when I walked in. I felt that they knew things about me that I had never told a living soul—it was that kind of vibe.

They had an awful lot of yarn, too—and all different kinds.

I bought two, um, rolls (?) of pink wool/silk blend to make a skinny scarf to go with my purple coat. I'm all about having a different scarf for each coat. Although the scarf I made this weekend doesn't really go with anything, so now I probably have to buy another coat.

I also picked up a round needle for making a hat. And lemme tell you: this aroused no small amount of suspicion at The Yarn Connection.

Yarn Lady #1: What do you need that for?
Me: I'm making a hat.
Yarn Lady #2: A hat!?
Me: Yes. A hat.

[pause]

Me: I thought I might wear it...
Yarn Lady #1: [pointing to my pink yarn] You're not going to use this yarn!?
Me: Oh, no! I'm going to use this yarn.

[I showed them my scarf]

Yarn Lady #2: [Examining my scarf and judging me based on its crapness] Hmmm. I'd say a size 9.
Me: [Understanding something for once] Yes! I used size 9 needles!
Yarn Lady #2: [Handing me a circular needle] LKjlkjsdo nlkjlisdliusdf alij 16 inch.
Me: Oh. Really?
Yarn Lady #1: lkjiusdiuy ;l;9098sfgijhsdf oiov87sdfll Yarn.
Yarn Lady #2: Aardvaark.
Me: Ok. Cool.

[looks at needle]

Me: This one's a bit different than the ones I've seen [I instantly regretted saying that]
Yarn Lady #1: Well, hlso98098ihgsdfk uysdf7987bksjdf Uraguay.
Yarn Lady #2: [Nodding in total agreement] Chandrasekhar Limit. Messopotamia.
Me: [Giving thumbs up, for no reason] Yeah. Top.

Then Yarn Lady #1 rang me up and I paid something like $21 for the yarn and needles. This knitting business is kind of an expensive habit. However, unlike smoking crack or being a rage-a-holic, you get nice home-made warmies when you're done! And if that's not sublimation, then I'm a monkey's uncle!

Me: Thanks for your help!
Yarn Lady #2: You're welcome. Have a great day.

Then I got the hell out of dodge.

I went straight to Guy and Gallard. As I was waiting for my turn with the salad dude, I noticed a chalk board half hidden behind the salad bar. It read: What are the Five Kingdoms of Life?

I thought it was some mystical mumbojumbo, but I looked it up and it's actually scientific mumbojumbo.

The five kingdoms are:

Kingdom Monera:
This kingdom includes the prokaryotes: single-celled organisms that do NOT possess a nucleus. Examples include bacteria, actinomycetes, and the blue-green algae.

Kingdom Protoctista:
This kingdom includes the simplest eukaryotes: single-celled organisms that DO possess a nucleus. Examples include nucleated algae and slime moulds.

Kingdom Fungi:
These nonmotile eukaryotes lack flagella and develop from spores. Examples include yeast, moulds, and mushrooms.

Kingdom Plantae:
These eukaryotes develop from embryos and also use chlorophyll. Examples include mosses and vascular plants.

Kingdom Animalia:
These eukaryotes are multi-cellular organisms that develop from a blastula (a hollow ball of cells). Examples include worms, arthropods, and animals.

--source

The next logical question is: To what kingdom do you belong?

It reminded me that of late I have not been following the Fivefold Path to Happiness, which may explain why I haven't been all that happy recently! I need to get back on the path! First up: read more Bond Girl autobiographies. After that: Let eeeeeeeverything go...

2003-11-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

This One's For THE DEAN!

I am so flippin' jubilant right now!

2003-11-09T18:17:00.000-05:00

Result!
3 - 0! Not too shabby! Well done.

2003-11-09T11:07:00.000-05:00

Knit One, Purl One
First off, let me say that I fucking hate my laptop computer! It is CRAP. It doesn't even really work!

Here I am, at whatever in the morning [I wrote most of this entry last night, but I couldn't post it until now], alert and awake (and slightly tipsy from the evening's activities) wanting to do some work so that I can sit on Barney all day tomorrow and work on my scarf, but I can't flippin well do anything because this sodding computer won't work properly.

I want to be done with this whole project. It's hanging over me like a giant axe or whatever...

OK. So, this evening. I started today feeling like complete CRAP. I didn't sleep too well last night and at one point, I actually switched on the light and wrote some stuff in a notebook. I do this from time to time to empty out my mind so that I can sleep. It usually works quite well. It's like, y'know, turn yourself upside down and tip out all the junk in your brain and then get some kip.

When I woke up, though, I thought The Sickness was upon me because my throat was sore and I felt headachy. I probably do have The Sickness, but never mind because it was bound to get round to me eventually seeing as everybody else I know has had it (or has it).

My room mate R returned from knitting class just as I was on my third cup of coffee. I was suddenly gripped with the desire to knit myself a lovely scarf, so I popped down to the local yarn store place thingy and $35 later I had two knitting needles (size 9) and a lorra lorra yarn (purple).

I sat down on Barney (the giant purple armchair that I got at Busvan in San Francisco when I lived there 100 years ago...) and started knitting. Three hours later I had about two feet of scarf and no cartalidge in my hands.

Now I'm obsessed with knitting.

Last week, I was obsessed with Friendster, but that seems to have passed, thank god!

I like the idea that if I keep knitting, eventually I'll have a scarf that I can wear and say "Oh, this? Oh I made it myself." Which is what I always say about everything, only this time I will actually not be joking.

It's an exciting prospect.

Anyway, so after all that knitting I decided that I needed to do something besides knitting for the rest of the night, so I took a shower and threw on some slap and went down to Soho to The Night of 1000 Drawings which was some sort of thing with lots of drawings that were for sale. Apparently, anyone and everyone could hand in a drawing and then maybe someone would buy it.

There was an open bar.

I got there at about 7:30 and saw a few people I knew. I saw the DIQ, of course, but he made a point of completely ignoring me which I was slightly irked by until I remembered that he is a complete cunt, so it was hardly surprising. At one point he walked right past me while I was in line for the drinks and said nothing. I was going to say a casual "Hi" if I saw him again, but I didn't see him again, which was probably a blessing.

Actually, it's not just him who is impolite. There are several people in this general group who seem very rude, and it really puts me off. I think I've said before that it's like hearing a bum note in a piano concerto. It's jarring. I try not to take it personallyl, but I can't help it somehow. I think part of the problem is that, in England, when people are rude to you, it's usually on purpose—at least where I come from it is! If someone doesn't know you well, they default to being polite and friendly; and if they're not it's because they're an incredible twat, or they have some beef against you.

I don't know if that's the case here in America. In 11 years, I haven't managed to figure that one out! B said, on the way home, "Aah, don't sweat those guys" and I said, "I can't help it. I'm a schvitzer!"

I don't know why this bothers me so much. Maybe I'm just at a loose end right now so I'm dwelling on things that would otherwise not even touch me. It's funny. Not everyone in the group is unfriendly—most of them seem quite nice, actually. I don't know what it is; and of course I can hardly discuss it with the people in question! It's just unnerving to suddenly come face to face with someone who is looking at you with two entirely contradictory facial expressions:
1. Ugh, it's you; and,
2. I have no idea who you are.

That's why it's so odd. You think, "Does this person dislike me, or do they even remember me?"

The net result of these conflicting attitudes is a distinct "Why are you talking to me?" vibe, and it's just so off-putting!

Perhaps they're just insecure or something. I don't know. When I was small, I always thought that everyone else had it (Life) sussed and that I was the only person who ever felt anything less than brilliant. Later, I discovered that most people at some time, feel insecure (some more than others) and that a lot of what we take to be standoffishness or rudeness is really that person's insecurity, rather than some sense of superiority. That could be what it is with these people—I don't know. If it is, I hope they get over it because we're all older now and nobody is judging anybody else (are they?).

See, I'm very insecure myself, or I wouldn't be so bothered by how I perceive others to be treating me. A lot of the time, I try to at least pretend that I'm one of the people who has it sussed, but I'm not sure how convincing I am at it.

I don't know.

Anyway, I left the gallery with B and we got some fallafal and went to my house and inhaled it like underfed dogs. That's good eatin'.

By then, being full of gin and fallafel, I was feeling in better spirits so I decided that rather than sit at home like a nae mates with my knitting, I should go to the Robert Earl Keen show at Irving Plaza. Robert Earl Keen is my other room mate, S's cousin, so she had free tix and access to the VIP area and all the rest of it. I never listen to country music, so I thought this would be a good experience. And it was!

I liked the energy of the crowd—although every time I went to the ladies room I just felt annoyed at the women...—and REK's music was quite good. Not "my" scene, by any stretch, but I really enjoyed the whole thing and had a great time! I liked how the audience was not afraid to be enthusiastic. It was a bit like a Supergrass show, only with Texans instead of Limeys.

Then I got home and thought I'd take advantage of not being tired and do some work. Now I don't know what to do with myself. I guess I should just go to bed and listen to disturbing news stories on NPR until I fall asleep. [Note: actually, I went into the living room and knitted for half an hour, then I went to bed and continued to knit and listen to the radio until about 4 this morning].

I feel really antsy lately. This blog, I'm sure, reflects that. I don't think it's the DIQ or the freelance work or the cold weather or whatever. I think all these things wouldn't bother me at all were it not for some greater Thing that's bothering me that I can't seem to identify and/or shake off.

I don't know what it is.

Well, thus concludes another rather boring blog. I'm off to do some more knitting!

2003-11-07T15:53:00.000-05:00

Casualties of War
I've been trying to avoid even thinking about this because it makes me so angry that I just don't really know what to do.

They killed the Regan biopic because it was a "fictional account" of real events.

Fair enough.

Meanwhile, a piece of out and out war propoganda like Saving Jessica Lynch is due to be aired.

Anyone see a problem here?

I mean, it would just be so damaging if people didn't get the full truth about the Regans and their fascination with astrology...

But it's cool if we make up a bunch of lies about Iraq because the image of a woman being sodomized by a bunch of sand niggers is not going to hurt anyone, right...Not when there's an election coming up. Lynch, of course, has "no memory" of this ever happening to her. Nor are there any medical records to suggest that it happened. But as long as there's that convenient "three missing hours" why not fill it with something that will horrify the American public. And so what if Lynch ends up believing that she was brutally sodomized, or that more American troops die from the backlash that will result from this.

Let's not worry about that as long as the people here at home keep believing that they have a decent President representing them in the world.

I am so sick of this bullshit!

Elsewhere in the world, these lies are being reported on, while here in the good ole' freedom loving US of A, the only outlets reporting on it are the Lefty websites like Salon that nobody reads anyway—at least nobody who isn't already part of the choir on how fucked up the Bush administration is.

I feel terrible for Jessica Lynch. I don't care that she's getting half a million dollars advance for this. Maybe she's been told that she's helping the War effort or whatever. But, Ms Lynch, is it really worth it?

2003-11-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

Short, Meaningless Reviews
1. Magic and Medicine by The Coral - If The Yardbirds had made Pet Sounds...

2. Permission to Land by The Darkness - High pitched hilarity!

3. The latest issue of Q Magazine - glossy.

And that's it for now.

I got woken up this morning by Alarm Bitch—actually, I think I might be "Alarm Bitch" because I feel like we're in prison and I'm her bitch, the way she treats me...

Anyway, so Alarm Bitch, being the asshole that she is, had her buzzer on at 5:45. When she finally turned it off (after I yelled) she must have "accidentally" hit the snooze button because for the next half an hour it came back on every 10 minutes. So, I finally yelled again, this time with detailed instructions:

Ok, your alarm is much too loud. You need to turn it down and move it away from the window.

And this was followed by my usual "Christ on a fucking bicycle buggery bollocks" mumblings that constitute the majority of what comes out of my mouth.

I doubt this will have any effect on Alarm Bitch. And what is more sad is that my yelling woke one of my room-mates up and then when I was having breakfast she tried to convince me to get earplugs, which I suspect was her covert way of saying "You woke me up this morning and it was annoying." because then she said something about her not being able to get back to sleep afterwards. I feel her pain (I was the cause of her pain!). But ultimately, Alarm Bitch is the culprit and she will pay as god is my witness. And while god is witnessing things, let me add: Ah will nevah go hungry ag'in...

I did manage to go back to sleep for about half an hour. I had a dream about these two nuns who came to help me with Alarm Bitch. They had a calming effect on me in the dream. Maybe they were, ahem, "Calm"elites.

(It's the way I tell 'em.)

Watched The Shows round at D'cifer's last night. That's pretty much all there is to say about that. I walked around in the rain listening to The Man Comes Around, which is a sad/beautiful song by J. Cash. It has put me in a slight mood (again). He does that (J Cash). He makes me feel like the world is a shit hole filled with flawed beings. I guess it is. But sometimes you just want to put on a sparkly outfit, dance around like Kylie Minogue and forget your troubles.

I'm always in a mood, me! I'm a moody cow about 70% of the time! The rest of the time I'm either asleep or in some sort of chocolate-induced haze.

I didn't read any more of Ulysseys last night because I was reading Q instead. Then I tried to go to sleep, but couldn't. Blah blah blah. This blog is as boring as boring borag.

Something exciting (and preferably celebrity-enhanced) had better happen soon or I'm going to slip into a coma. I think I have The Sickness that everyone else seems to have had of late; and I would have called in sick today, I think, except that my presentation thingy got postponed until today so I had to come in. Anyway, on the excitement front, I'll have to start plotting and see what develops.

I have a feeling that this weekend will be really low key. And that's good! I kind of want to be a square mum this weekend and stay in and finish up my freelance work so that I don't have to keep thinking about it all the bloody time! The problem is that if I don't go out and do things at the weekend, I feel like I really haven't had a weekend and then when Monday rolls around, I feel like I wasted the two days.

Ah well.

I know a lot of people who would be very happy if I got a lot of work done this weekend, so maybe that's incentive enough to "waste" the two days.

I may also see a movie.

I'm feeling a bit Loner-ish, so maybe I should indulge it this weekend. I'll walk around in a black coat, like J Cash. And then maybe I'll shoot a man in the West Village, just to watch him die...

2003-11-06T09:50:00.000-05:00

I started reading it again last night. This time, nothing will get in my way. It = Ulysseys, by the way.

It really is lovely.

I had forgotten how good Joyce is.

When you read a lot of Harry Potter books all the time, you forget that some books are magical even without the boy wizards.

What else? Today I have a presentation to give my Boss of Bosses. Last night I had a dream about it and woke up thinking, "Thank god that presentation went well." And then I was slightly perturbed when I remembered that it was still Thursday morning. Ah well.

I listened to the Strokes again on my way in this morning. I remember not liking Life on Other Planets at first—because of expectations and all the rest of it—but now I love it! It's all very Pride and Prejudice. Maybe I will eventually come around to Room on Fire. I don't like to write things off so quickly like that, anyway, so I've decided to let the album ferment a little. I do like the first and eighth songs, though. The 8th song is a little slower than the others, maybe that's why.

Of course every time I listen to it, I just picture Drew Barrymore, which doesn't really make any sense because Julian writes all the songs, not Fab. I imagine a secret love triangle between Drew, Julian, and Fab in which, unbeknownst to Fab, Julian writes an entire album of songs in ode to Drew in a veiled attempt to steal her away. But Drew, being a clever gal, is not for the stealing. Drew seems to me to be a girl who knows on what side her bread is buttered...

Also, we have a leeetle crush on Fab—Fab, with his loveliness and special hair.

It's Thursday! Oh, I already mentioned that. I love Thursday.

We watched The OC last night. The OC is definitely my favorite New Show. It's so soapy! You need to rinse off afterwards or it'll dry out your skin. I love how there are no clear-cut bad guys. Everyone's kind of assholey in their own way—except Seth. Seth, with his loveliness and special hair.

Also, as a Jew, I would like to address the Cohens for a minute. First of all, I agree with the recent article in The Nation that talks about this (annoying) trend on TV of Jewish people always being paired with WASPy people. As though, somehow, no Jew (or WASP) is complete unless they find themselves a WASP (or Jew) to balance out their Jewishness (or WASPiness). It's so true! Not that there's anything wrong with interfaith marriage—hello, I myself am the proud product of a TV-compliant Jew/WASP pairing—but there seems to be this unspoken rule that Jews need WASPs (and WASPs need Jews) or they're just not living The American Dream.

Also, I'm sorry, but Peter Gallagher, let me explain something: being Jewish is not merely about having bushy eyebrows (even Grouch's were painted on...) and being a Lawyer from Brooklyn. Also: What's the deal with his character being called "Sandy"? Nobody is called Sandy, except perhaps for famous Baseball lovely Mr. Sandy Koufax—after whom Sandy Cohen is no doubt named, in which case, why didn't they just call him "Jew Jewman" or something equally illustrative of the fact that Sandy is supposed to be a Jew-out-of-water in a lake full of high-falutin' WASPs who just don't understand his "Noo Yawk" ways. Actually, it's kinda ironic that last night Seth trotted out the worn, worn cliche about Jews not being good at sports. Ahem, Seth: your dad is named after a Hall of Famer who was Jewish and also quite good at sports...

Also, Seth is by any estimation as cute as f*ck, yet he's portrayed as the stereotypical nebbishy clown because he's Jewish. Meanwhile, the other guy (Ryan McGentile, or whatever his name is) gets to strut around in a tight t-shirt like freakin' Marlon Brando. Put Seth Cohen in any real life environment, such as Planet Earth, and he'd be crushed under the weight of all the ass he'd be getting on account of his raw sex appeal and good looks.

But on TV? Nah. He's a lovable schmuck who can't get The Girl because he's just too nice. It's not necessarily an unflattering stereotype. But y'know, not all Black people are really good at R&B singing and basketball either...

That's all I'm saying.

Other than that, I've no truck with The OC. Everyone in my apartment has a crush on Seth Cohen as well. I was reluctant at first because I was blinded by the too-obvious bad-boy allure of the Russel Crowe-resembling lead character. But now I'm all about Seth!

Anyway, my point is this: Jews Rock! 'Specially Halfies!

2003-11-05T16:10:00.000-05:00

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...
Happy Birthday, Miss J. I love you!

[l-r: Me, J, Miss J]

2003-11-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

Last night it occurred to me that I have never fully read Ulysseys. I've started reading it about 6 times—I almost started it again last night, but instead I read The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which I enjoyed. I've read the first 100 pages or so (of Ulysseys), and I've read the last page (yes I said yes I will yes), but there's a whole middle chunk of about 20,000 pages that remains a mystery to me because I just won't put the effort in!

I smell a blunt analogy...

Of course! What are blogs for!

I thought blogs were about reviewing gigs.

That's how they start, but eventually the reviews give way to prose navel gazing

And sometimes naval gazing, if you're of a nautical bent.

Uh huh.

Let's hear it, then.

Right.

To me, Love is like Ulysseys: I hear it's really good, but I just don't have the sitzfleisch!

But you know all about how it starts and ends...

Yes. I'm good at the beginning part of Love; and I know how it ends. I just don't know what goes on in the middle.

And you think you're missing out on a lot of Great Literature?

Yeah!

Maybe you should try the Clif's Notes.

Or I could rent the movie version.

There's no movie version of Ulysseys.

What about that one with Harry Hamlin?

That was Clash of the Titans.

Hmmm. So, is Love anything like Clash of the Titans?

In your case? Absolutely!

2003-11-04T12:12:00.000-05:00

I was just writing a semi-important email using Outlook, so I hit the spellchecker and it spell-checked my surname as Hanuman—the Hindu monkey god!

How cool is that! And how come Outlook knows about that sort of thing...

Also: I was planning on reviewing Room on Fire, the new Strokes album. So, here's my review: It is CRAP.

Sorry Fab! Sorry Drew! Oh, and sorry Julian! There's just no heart anywhere in it. None! There's nowhere to get a foothold in the whole thing. It's like somebody said, "Let's make a Strokes album. We'll have one song that goes like this Strokes song, and then another one that's like this other Strokes song, and then half an hour later, we'll call it a day." It's not nearly as good as Is This It?. Oh dear. Well, never mind. Two of the songs aren't bad; but the rest are entirely forgettable.

I wonder if Nick Valensi is annoyed that he isn't the "cute one" any more now that Fab is with Drew and is getting all the magazine covers. Fab with his loveliness and special hair. Poor Nick has to make do with Duran Duran's cast-offs (viz. Amanda de Cadenet). And what will happen if Albert Hammond Jr. starts dating Gwynneth Paltrow or somebody like that? Then Nick'll get bumped down even further! Poor bean, sitting there feeling un-adored. Let's all chip in and get him some more drainpipe trousers and a new scarf for the Winter. Looks like it's going to be a chilly one!

And that's my review of the new Strokes album.

2003-11-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

Swings and Roundabouts
Last night, and this morning, I've been feeling really good. I think it's because I got a lot done last night after I got home from the Heeb editors meeting and for whatever reason, I heard not a peep today from The Mystery Radio. Not waking up, not yelling, not going through the whole flippin' scenario again has really helped my mood today. I'm still really tired right now; but at least I feel like I'm dealing with all the shit I have to do, bit by tiny bit, and making some headway. I'm trying to clear everything off my plate by the end of November so that I can just chill in December and maybe work on some projects of my own.

After work yesterday, I went and met J, my Dad, and L at their hotel. We sat in this rather nice lounge area, noshing rather nice free grub, and (not unironically) talking about the evils of Pure Capitalism and the present Government's near-pathalogical pursuit of its own interests above those of the Country. While I scarfed down some tiny cakes and talked about real politik, it ocurred to me that the term, Armchair Socialist (or it's more recent incarnation, Limousine Liberal) is always used pejoratively—as though only "Poor" (quote unquote), downtrodden people ought to be left wing.

If you're middle class, people assume that you must be rebelling against something by supporting universal healthcare or a higher minimum wage. You can't possibly really care about that sort of thing, right? I mean, not when you can afford to pay for things...

We live in a world of hybrids, yet we constantly seek to polarize everything. Democrats and Republicans are locked in this deathgrip. Meanwhile, the country is going down the tubes. We're the richest country in the world, so why don't we have the best education system and the best healthcare and the best standard of living in the world? Why do we have more people on anti-depressants than any other country? Why are there 40 million Americans without health insurance?

We're too busy fighting over who loves America more to notice that America is in serious trouble. It's just like The OC: Poor Marissa is anorexic and ODing on sleeping pills. Meanwhile all her mother can think about is how much she hates Marissa's Dad (played by Tate Donovan). Listen, I'm not overly fond of Tate Donovan, but even I can see that he cares about his daughter. Marissa's parents need to stop fighting and take poor Marissa to the nearest food court and fill her with Nachos! And that's what the Republicans and Democrats need to do with America. Let's stop all this squabbling and take America out to Denny's for some Moons Over My Hammy. If we don't start acting like a family, America is going to run away and become a drug addict or, g-d forbid, a scientologist...

As for me, I'm not really all that Left Wing. I'm quite moderate, really (and I'm something of a moral Libertarian, when you get down to it), except that in comparison to the current political climate here, I'm practically a Marxist. At the very least, I'm a commie pinko who doesn't really Love America. How can I Love America when I just want all of its citizens to enjoy a decent standard of living?

This is why I'm supporting Clark in 2004. It's a combination of real politik (I think he has a better shot at winning than any of the other candidates) and actual respect for Clark's policies—I'm not completely cynical! His "New Patriotism" is a good tack, I think. Especially because I'm really sick of hearing that my beliefs are "un American." I actually find it deeply, deeply insulting that being conservative has somehow come to mean being patriotic. That was a very clever thing that the Republican party did, and my hat is off to them for their clever trick, but it's also completely fascist of them—textbook!—and people need to wake up and smell the bullshit on that one before it's too late.

I hope that Clark really can "take back patriotism" because hopefully, if it can be diffused as an issue, it won't be an issue and we can return to healthy, meaningful debate about what is best for the country, rather than who is more Patriotic. Bah! I mean, if you live and work and pay taxes in a country, then why is your patriotism even an issue?

Let's hope that, together with storylines in The OC, Wes Clark really can pull America back from the edge. I'm hopeful; and that's why I'm volunteering (I signed up yesterday). I'm also getting a bit fed up of sitting around whining about myself all the time, and writing all these blog posts about how crap blokes are. Blokes will always be crap; but there are more important things going on! I'm becoming Nero-esque, and I don't like it at all! It's about time I stopped fiddling.

2003-11-03T09:45:00.000-05:00

Come On!
I love a good rock song! And you can always tell a good rock song by the one uniting factor: The phrase, "Come Oooon!" is always sung, yelled, or spoken somewhere in the song. Who knows why? It's one of rock's great mysteries, but it can't be argued with.

Last night, I had dinner with the fam at some local joint in the Village. Dad seemed really tired (not surprisingly), but when the conversation turned to that Great City of Las Vegas he perked right up—and so did I.

I love Vegas!

Then L suggested that the next time the house they have out there is inbetween renters, we all pile over and camp out there for a week or two and gamble all our money away. Sounds like a good idea to me!

After dinner, we popped up to Magnolia Bakery for some cupcakes. Then I got home to find R watching Pride and Prejudice on DVD (one of only about 5 DVDs I own). OK, so that I might be judged, here are my DVDs:

Pride and Prejudice (BBC TV miniseries w/ Colin Firth as Darcy)
This is Spinal Tap
Blur: Singles
Out of Sight
It's a Wonderful Life
Harry Potter and the Sourcerer's Stone

And I think that's about it. Anyway, P&P defies criticism because it is just so fabulous. Colin Firth: Oh. My. God...

Anyway, so four hours later, I went to bed, but couldn't fall asleep on account of the sugar from the cupcakes. I remember looking at the clock and thinking "Gawd, is it really 2 o'clock..?"

Then, 3.75 hours later GUESS WHAT? That sodding radio came on and woke me up. It's getting pretty old, this being woken up by Lite Rock. Actually, the alarm went off on Sunday as well, but it was much quieter. It woke me up, but I was able to fall back to sleep—plus, it being Sunday, I knew I could have a lie in, so I wasn't all that bothered. I actually thought that maybe the offending radio party had decided to turn the radio down in response to all my yelling, as a neighborly gesture of consideration and goodwill.

I don't know why I would think that. This person is obviously dumber than cotton.

The alarm came on, as usual, at 5:45 and woke me up. It stayed on, at the same loud volume as before. What happened to the Sunday quietness? I couldn't—and still can't—believe that someone would actually turn the radio down on a Sunday, presumably so as not to "disturb anyone" but turn it back up when the week rolls back around.

Sunday means NOTHING to me. I don't give a shit about Sunday. My cultural background is such that basically "The Sabbath" goes from Friday at sundown all the way through to Monday morning pretty much, but who cares about that anyway? You can have a lie in at the weekend; but you can't have a lie in after somebody wakes your ass up at a quarter to six on a Monday (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) morning. Bitch!

So, as usual, I yelled out of the window: "Turn your radio down!"

And, as usual, nothing happened. So, I went for it again:

Turn that FUCKING radio down!

And they did.

Anyway, I must do something about this besides yelling out of the window every morning. I'm thinking I will post some notes around the lobby of my building and also the next door building, asking nicely if this person would adapt their behavior slightly so that I don't have to commit an act of homicide just to get a full night's sleep.

More Important Topics
My beloved Foxes beat Blackburn Rovers 2-0 yesterday in a victorious home turf game at the "Crisp Bowl" in Leicester. This pushes them out of bottom position in the Premiership and takes them a step further away from relegation at the end of the season. Relegation would cause much distress and anguish about The Toon, let me tell you. And not only that, but it would cause much distress and anguish right here in Greenwich Village, in a particular corner of Sullivan Street...

Next up: LCFC plays Man City on 11/9. I might try to watch the match, because it's on a Sunday. This gives me some time to figure out where, in New York, it is possible to watch a Leicester City game. People here really only know about Man United because of David Beckham. Occasionally, at a party, you'll meet some yahoo who has heard of "Kew Pee Are" (QPR), a 2nd division team at the moment; and then there's MrJ who is a Chelsea supporter. But apart from that, all you ever hear about in terms of Premier League Footy is bloody Manchester United. Feh!

Well, anyway, Congratulations to the Foxes and: altogether—say it with me now...

BLUE ARMY!

2003-11-02T00:33:00.000-05:00

I've Never Been in a Masthead Before

Jo, how come you're writing in your blog on a Saturday night? Aren't you supposed to be out having drunken existential crises?

Normally, yes, but tonight I opted to stay home and WORK because if I don't get things out of the way now, I can't hang out tomorrow and have fun. I'm all about priorities and being all mature and shit.

That's great.

Yeah it is. I'm on a break now, though. I just wanted to mention that I am in the masthead of the current issue of Heeb Magazine.

In the masthead?

Yes! I've never been in a masthead before. It's very exciting!

What does it say?

It says,

Webmaster
Joanna Honikman

That's you!

I know!

Wait, so can anyone see it?

Yes! All you have to do is buy the current issue of Heeb Magazine and you can see it. There are also some articles and interviews in there that you can read when you're done looking at my name in the masthead.

Wow! Where can I get a copy of Heeb Magazine?

Well, you can get it at any Barnes & Noble or Tower store. And then it's available in a lot of indie stores, too.

That's really exciting! What else do you have to say?

I'm listening to the Chemical Brothers.

Hold on! I thought you couldn't listen to them anymore on account of The Horrible Thing of 2000!

Well, I seem to be over it!

It's about bloody time! That was, like, three whole years ago...

I know. I find that the Chemical Brothers are an excellent Freelancing Aural Aid for when it's late and you have lots of work to do.

That is so interesting. I'm glad you're sharing this information.

I feel the same way about VHS or Beta.

Again, that is fascinating...

I can spin a yarn, me.

At least you've got that going for you.

Yeah! And now I'm also in a masthead, so I'm sorted basically, like, forever!

That's pretty major. Didn't you also purchase a rilly cool T-shirt today?

Yes, I did! Thank you for reminding me.

Tell us about the T-Shirt

It's red and it's got Che on it.

Oh, so you mean it's like every other t-shirt that you see around these days.

Exactly!

Alright. Go back and finish your work now so that you can go to sleep.

OK.

2003-11-01T19:07:00.000-05:00

NOTE: I'm updating this post with this comment: I am most likely going to create the service detailed below, so if anyone steals this idea from me, here is digital proof that it was my idea first and you, sir, are a low down dirty ratbastard! Ok, I'm done.

Full O Beans, Me!
I have just had the most brilliant idea, ever.

Wait, better than Rockstar Pants???

Yes! Oh my god. So much better!

What is it!?

Ok, so I just popped out to Other Music to buy the new Strokes album and see about some VHS or Beta and then on my way home this awsome idea just came to me out of the blue.

So, I love going to gigs, as you know, but more often than not, I miss a gig because I'm just not spending hours of my time searching band websites and ticketwhore and whatnot to see who's playing in my nieghborhood. But what if I could sign up for a service, select any number of bands and/or GENRES of music, and then receive emails AND an online calendar of gigs with links to purchase tickets? It would be a subscription service and would have to be tied into all the main online ticket places as well as individual band and venue websites (but ideally, the band and venue websites would subscribe to the service as Vendors and would have access to an input calendar where they would publish updcoming gigs to the site).

And it could be called...GigWhore.com

So, basically, it would work like this:

1. I, an End User, sign up and create a gig profile which would include my zip code, how far I'm willing to travel for ROCK (i.e. if I'm the kind of person who would get on a plane and fly to Philly to see Supergrass, then I would need to be able to specify that so I could get info on gigs in Philly), what bands I like, and also what other Genres of music I like.

2. My user info is saved to a DB and I am given secure access to an online Calendar showing all the upcoming gigs for the bands and genres that I like. The good thing about this is that up and coming bands who subscribe as vendors would reach a whole new audience of potential gig goers. Example: had I known about VHS or Beta through my appreciation of The Rapture, I might have paid money to go and see them live, but since nobody told me about them, I missed out (and they missed out on my cash). So, I see the calendar and it shows me what shows are upcoming in my geographical catchment area. I can click on the gig and link to purchase a ticket, or link to info about how to purchase a ticket. Ideally, my CC info would be part of my profile and I could just do a one click shopping thing and automatically buy the tickets.

3. When tickets for gigs I might like go on sale, I get an email with the info, so that I never miss the opportunity to buy tickets for a show I might like. I also get a reminder email a week before the show which, if I had bought tickets, would remind me that I had tickets to the show, or if I hadn't bought tickets and the gig wasn't sold out, would remind me that I could still get tickets to the show...

4. I think it would be cool if there was a (uh oh...) Friendster-like aspect to the site so that you could interact with other people who liked the same bands as you. That way, you could even meet up with total strangers and go to see obscure bands that none of your friends like.

5. Vendors sign up to the gig publishing side where they basically enter info (for small venues/bands) into a calendar db. They could also get info on how many people were buying tickets to their gigs through the site and either pay a flat fee or some kind of per click thing. I dunno. That's not really important. I'm more interested in how it would work on the programming side. Anyway, so the big ticketwhore companies would just hook their DBs up and run batch files to plug info into the gig site's database.

I think that would be a cool Website! I wonder if anyone is developing that right now? I could easily develop a New York area version, but the gigs themselves would have to be manually researched and I don't really have time, which is why I wish this service already existed so that I could just subscribe to it!

Oftentimes there's a knowledge gap between promoter and audience (I find this happens to me a lot!). Unless you have time to keep on top of who's playing and where and when, then you miss a lot of gigs and that is bad bad bad. Or, worse, you find out too late and have to go on eBay to get tickets that cost 8 times as much as the cover price! If something like this existed, people who really enjoy gigs, such as myself, would have access to a customized gig calendar that would include, not only bands they already like, but up and coming bands that they've never heard of, but might like. Also, I could meet people who love Supergrass as much as I do, and we could form a rilly annoying clique!

I think this is a pretty cool idea!

Maybe it already exists...but if so, it needs better promotion because I've never heard of it. I guess if it exists then it's probably just in the form of general mass-emails from ticketwhore, but what I'm talking about is so much greater and (greater) in scope because it involves any and all gigs, rather than just ticketwhore gigs. I don't think it's fair that "the little guy" gets left out of the loop, or that you end up having to subscribe to 800 individual band and/or venue email lists that you then have to sift through to plan your gig schedule!

There's got to be a simpler way, dammit! This is AMERICA people! "Give me convenience, or give me death!" Give me one-stop gig info!

That's it. I'm done.

2003-11-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

Groucho Marx's Armpit
We just watched Journeys With George, a documentary about the Dubya press corps on the campaign trail. It was interesting! He comes off as being, well, kind of a cocky but charming guy. Watching it through the lens of All The Shit That Has Happened Since 2000 was kind of interesting. It makes you wonder if the person on screen was the "real" Dubya, or if he's just an artless, trusting fellow in the middle of a pack of wolves.

I don't really know. The Docu was really good, though. I recommend it! It's a great look into the love-hate relationship between the Candidate and the Press Corps. I don't have a lot of energy right now to get into a more interesting or insightful commentary on the film, or any of its themes, so I'll just say this: Top film.

Last night we saw Satanicide at the Bowery Bee. I was alarmed and appalled, frankly, at how sparse the audience was! Apparently, The Drive By Truckers are a lot more popular, which I can't really speak to because I've never seen them. I do find it hard to believe, though, that anyone could be funnier than The 'Cide. They are so genius! I hear they're playing a gig in Brooklyn soon. I'm definitely going! Their songs are really good and then they deliver them with such ernest conviction that you feel like it's a "real" rock show (which it is), but at the same time you feel like you're having a complete This is Spinal Tap moment. Ah. So genius!

There were two guys in the audience dressed, respectively, as Slash and Axl Rose and at one point, Axl got up on stage and sang an impromptu rendition of Patience with the band backing him up. He did a spot on impression of the real Axl. It was just brilliant!

After Satanicide, it was back to mine where the rest of the team were waiting for us so that we could journey to Brooklyn for some Halloween revelry. The Special Express (the L train) was packed even more than usual. I spent most of the trip in Groucho Marx's armpit, which is not a place I necessarily wanted to be—at least not with a fake Grouch. I saw two Grouchos during the evening and it reminded me of this experience I had when I was living in Berkeley. It wasn't Halloween or anything, but I was walking down the street with my friend B and all of a sudden, Groucho Marx appeared before me, walking toward me. We locked eyes for a brief moment and I had a kind of epiphinal experience. It was amazing. I fell in love, basically—just for that brief moment. It knocked the breath out of me. I don't know why. I mean, I do know why! I love Groucho—I have movies and books and documentaries up the wazoo about him at home, so it's not that surprising. I worship him! So seeing some dude dressed up as Grouch was bound to have that effect on me...but it wasn't really the Groucho Marx aspect so much as the MAN who was dressed as Groucho that I fell in love with. It was like I saw, in an instant, this guy and his love for Groucho and I fell in love with that love. Something like that...Anyway, so seeing the Grouchos last night was pretty cool. Although the second Groucho was better looking. The guy on the train wasn't really doing much for me. The second guy who I saw in Williamsburg looked like an Animal Crackers era Grouch, whereas the L Train Grouch was more of an A Night in Casablanca era Grouch, which as we all know is just not as cool! Hello! A Night in Casablanca!? Barrel, prepare to have your bottom scraped.

OK. Oh, this reminds me of another Berkeley story! One day, I was walking across Shattuck Ave when who should be walking toward me but Adolph Freakin' Hitler. Again, it wasn't Halloween (this is how Berkeley is, folks) and there were no performances of The Bunker being staged anywhere that I knew of, so basically this guy was just dressed as Hitler cuz, y'know, why wouldn't you..? I asked around and it turns out that this guy—and the Groucho guy as well—were just local nutcases who liked to dress up as other people. This made me a little sad, though. Dressing up as Hitler is completely nutty, of course, but what about dressing up as Groucho Marx? It's less weird to be sure (and I find it kind of alluring actually—but then I would because I am weird like that), but you're still walking around dressed as another person which says a lot about your emotional stability, I think. I guess Frank Ferrante would argue that there's nothing wrong with making a living from dressing up like Groucho Marx, so really, I might be making the really FRIGHTENING argument that whatever you do, as long as you're doing it for money it's perfectly OK and that what separates the nutjobs from the norms is that the nutjobs don't get paid!

The pod people have taken me over at last! Aaaaah!

Anyway, crazy or no, the guy who dressed up as Groucho Marx just did it because he liked to. And for some reason, I found/find that really appealing! And you know what, I wish I had been able to get to know him to see whether or not he really was crazy or just slightly unhinged.

We are all slightly unhinged.

I feel that way after last night, but we'll get to that.

Anyway, so we got to Brooklyn and walked over to where this alleged free booze-up in a warehouse was taking place. It was a bit of a mob scene, and we couldn't even get close to the door, so we walked on and ended up crashing a couple of random parties. One of them was in this place that was full of acquaria, and the other was at some guy's house and there was a DJ and lots of dancing, so we stuck around. I danced. I didn't drink anything except water, though (plus 3 drinks that I had earlier), so I was pretty sober the whole night. This wasn't a good thing! Being sober was the last thing I needed to be last night. Call me disfunctional if you will, but sometimes you need to get out of your own head for a while and just forget about all the shit that's causing you distress. The "unhealthiness" only comes in if you NEVER deal with anything and just escape all the time. I think a moderate amount of escape is quite healthy, but then I would say that! I mean, going on Holiday and having The Weekend is basically a way to escape from the pressure of working at your job, so I think getting a little drunk or whatever you like to do, as long as you come back to earth and deal with your shit afterwards, is perfectly fine. So there!

OK, where was I? So, when we were walking to the first party (the one we couldn't get into) we ran into a small group of people on the sidewalk, one of whom was, the DIQ (please see earlier post on this topic, because I can't be bothered to go into it all over again). He said "Hi," I said "Hi," and then I turned my attention elsewhere. Then, I ran into him again very briefly at the second party.

Him: Hey, how are you?
Me: Hi. I'm good. So, what's up with you?
Him: Oh, I'm really great. I'm working on a mural blah blah blah...

And then I just thought "Ah fuck this" and walked away. Luckily, the setup was such that walking away could be done subtly and without giving the impression that I was just up and walking away. He was basically in a group walking in to a room, and I was in a group walking out so it worked out very nicely.

So, then we walked on for a bit and crashed the third party and danced around for several hours and yada yada yada. But I just couldn't really get into it. My mind was elsewhere. I danced. I boogied. I got down. And then at one point I just reached this thresh hold where I could no longer be bothered, so I walked inbetween the three parties for a while (I managed to get into the first one after the initial craziness had subsided) and then I went and sat outside in the cold, looking up at the sky; and then I got really cold so I came back in and sat in the stairwell like Robin from The Muppet Show ("Halfway up the stairs is the stair where I sit..."). I know you're thinking, "God, that's pitiful!" but I was thinking it about 15 times as much as you are! Oy...

See, since the whole emailing the DIQ a few weeks ago, I've been thinking that at some point I would run into him again at one social event or another because we know people in common. In my mind, for this meeting, I would be looking and feeling fabulous and, upon seeing me, he would be gripped with overwhelming guilt and would be compelled to say something like, "Oh my god, Jo, you are right! I have been such a jerk! Let's forget about what happened and be friends." But of course, the fact that he is such an asshole to begin with makes anything like that an impossibility—and really, no one ever says things like that, even if they're not assholes. I'll never feel like things are square with him. I mean, it's not that I want to go out with him again or anything, but I would like to be able to hang out in a social setting where he is also present and have things just be normal. It's hard to explain, but I feel like there's a power imbalance (all in my mind) where, as the dumper, he has power and where I, as the dumpee, have none. I don't like that! It makes me uncomfortable when I should be fabulous.

Also, seeing him and then realizing that he just will never give enough of a shit about me to make any effort to even things out, just made me feel even more shitty. It's like, here I am spending all this energy thinking about it all, while he probably doesn't even remember what happened. I doubt whether, during the three months inbetween emails, he thought about it for ONE SECOND and felt the slightest bit guilty or sad or regretful or wondered if I was ok. If I wanted to "resolve" things, the only way would be if I made an effort to talk to him because he really couldn't give a crap either way—and that's just really fucking annoying!

So, this makes me feel like even MORE of a twat for even caring at all about the situation.

I guess I feel like a dupe. I thought, back in June or whatever, that I had made a new friend [gawd, I sound like a right sadcase!]. I didn't realize that it was just a random hookup type of scenario. If I'd known that at the time, I wouldn't have slept with him in the first place. Well, maybe I would. I don't know. No, you know what, I wouldn't have. I liked him. I thought he was funny and cool and I enjoyed hanging out with him the times we hung out leading up to the hook-up. We spent a good deal of time together that didn't involve any sexual activity at all, and I had a right laugh. If I had known that as soon as we slept together he would have gone off me, I would have just kept things platonic. I feel like basically, he has poor judgment for treating me that way, and must be incredibly immature and lame, but that I have even worse judgment and am even more lame for allowing him to treat me that way in the first place!

See, it really just all boils down to me being pissed off with myself for allowing this stupid, trivial thing to have such an affect on me. I don't know why I even give a shit. I guess I feel like I shouldn't have to go through shit like this any more because I've been there so many times before and when is it going to be just normal and cool and not fucked up? I think I'm still drawn to people who will treat me badly, which is another source of annoyance. This guy is clearly a complete Jerk. I think even his friends think he's a jerk; but they're not shagging him, so they just get to enjoy the talented, amusing, and fun aspects of him—which I would have liked to have enjoyed, too. His jerkiness would not have interferred with my life in any way if we hadn't slept together and he hadn't been such a twat.

So, I'm just bashing myself over the head for my terrible terrible judgment and then bashing myself even more for letting it bother me so much! Bash bash bash, etc...

The problem is that I still have this problem of only being attracted to complete and utter cunts. And the more it happens, the more annoyed I get with myself. It's not that I think these guys are "out to hurt me" or anything like that. This guy? I'm sure there's nothing really wrong with him except immaturity and selfishness—but I don't really know because I hardly know him at all. I was never given the opportunity to get to know him because he was too busy being immature and selfish...

The problem is that I seem to only be attracted to people who are immature and selfish. So, I keep setting myself up for this kind of crap. And it bothers me. Makes me angry with myself. Gets in the way of having a good time. It preys upon me, and until I figure out why, I'll never be able to stop it!

It's not even about this GUY in particular, but about the accumulated GUYS. It's not a huge deal what he did. Sure, it sucked. He's a twat and all the rest of it. But it's not like he set out to hurt me. I really don't think he did. I find it very hard to imagine him sitting down, hatching an elaborate plot to shag and then dump me. I think he just followed his immature asshole instincts. The nature of immature jerks is that they will hurt your feelings sooner or later. But you can do something about it! You can Avoid Them. But I don't seem to be able to do that, and this troubles me. Maybe I think that one day, one of the jerks will turn out not to be a jerk after all and then I'll get to have my cake and eat it; and although my brain knows that this will never happen, the rest of me just really freakin' likes cake!

Basically, I'm really pissed off with myself right now. I've taken this rather small incident and blown it up into a Great Symbol of how fucked up I am, which is again another thing that's pissing me off. It's like a big snowball of annoyance. It started with a tiny ice-crystal (otherwise known as "getting my ass dumped") and then I took it and rolled it down this GIANT hill (me braaaaain) and now, here I am several months later stuck underneath this giant boulder-sized snowball, unable to move forward or get up and move on. And Halloween, while not a disater by any means—I stayed out till about 3:30, got my groove on, and also had a TOP time at Satanicide—was nonetheless burdened with the weight of this stupid fucking snowball!

So, that is basically the crux of what is annoying me right now, because I hate it when emotional/psychological shit gets in the way of having a good time. I mean, at one point this random dude asked me to dance, and he seemed alright, at least for a dance. But I just could not get into the whole "Party" atmosphere of the night—even though I had a top costume and should have been having a really good time. What a waste!

Argh!

So, yes, I'm having a bit of a crisis right now. Last night, I got home and I just felt like such an incredible Fuckwit.

I definitely have been focussing too much on the ice crystal and not enough on the rest of the snowball, and as of this moment, that will stop! The ice crystal isn't important. So, I guess that's one good thing that came out of last night.

And that was Halloween.

2003-11-01T04:31:00.000-05:00

I am a total fuckwit.

2003-10-31T09:49:00.000-05:00

I Am Mad at You, George W. Bush!
AAaargh! Happy Halloween everbody. This morning, I was woken up yet the fuck again by the radio. This time, the Lite Rock atrocity was "Let's Hear it For the Boy" from Footloose. I wonder whatever happened to Lori Singer. She's probably getting a decent night's sleep someplace other than Sullivan street...

Anyway, this morning I decided to take some action. I got out of bed, put some clothes on, grabbed my keys and went downstairs to what I thought was the offending apartment—there was a light on in the window that looks out onto the allyway, so I figured the noise was probably coming from there. I was wrong, though! I rang the buzzer and a very nice woman came to the door looking bleary-eyed.

"Is that your radio?" I asked in a calm, quiet voice.
"No. I don't know where it's coming from," she replied.

I felt awful!

"I'm so sorry for waking you. Oh my god." I continued.
"Oh, it's alright, I have to get up anyway and go into the office..."
"I'm so sorry. That radio is doing my head in."
"Yeah, I can hear it from my kitchen."
"Well, I'm really sorry for waking you up."
"Oh, no it's ok. Really."

And then I went back upstairs where the radio was now blarring out some bland R&B shite.

"Your Radio is too fucking loud!" I yelled out of the window.

Nothing.

And then,

TURN THAT RADIO DOWN NOW!!!

And the radio fell silent almost immediately. So clearly, this person responds well to simple, direct commands spoken in the imperative.

So, I guess my whole "politeness is sooo important" blather from yesterday was complete crap because I wasn't at all polite this morning. When I went downstairs, my plan was to be really nice about it, and I was nice to the woman who answered the door...but when I got back upstairs, having failed the mission, I was too pissed off to remember my manners.

The thing that really annoys me about this is that for the last three mornings, I've yelled at this person to turn their radio down. As S pointed out over breakfast, any normal person would reason that perhaps their radio was TOO FUCKING LOUD and that they should do something about it. I don't think the onus should be on me, every morning, to instruct this person to turn down the volume. I believe precident has been well established by now: the radio is too loud. It is not acceptable to expect other people to tell you when you're doing something inappropriate—sure, the first couple of times you do it, you need the feedback. But once you have been made aware that a certain behavior (such as having your radio too loud at 5:45 in the morning) is offensive to other people then it's your responsibility, as a HUMAN FUCKING BEING, to make sure that your radio doesn't persist in waking ME up. Tiny babies can grasp this concept, so why can't my neighbor get with the fucking program..?

Maybe this person has some sort of short-term memory problem, like the dude in Memento? If so, I will happily tattoo "Keep Radio Volume Down" on their torso with a blunt stylus. I just need to find them first...

Today is Halloween. I love Halloween. All Christian Holidays are Pagan in their origin (or at least, they have been applied to existing Pagan holidays: Easter, The Yuletide, uh...Easter), but Halloween has no Christian table cloth covering it. It's just balls out ghosts, ghouls, and spirits of the undead. Pagan shit. Also, there is CANDY. I like dressing up, too. I used to do a lot of amateur dramatics when I was a teen, but of course I was the worst actress EVER (yes, even worse than Andie MacDowell, if such a thing is possible). The last "acting" I did was Freshman year of college when I played all the female roles in a production of The Scottish Play. The most fun part was playing the weird sisters. I shoved a fake beard on and spoke in a thick Scottish accent. Nobody knew what I was saying, but it sure was fun! But, yeah, I still SUCKED!

Anyway, so these days, Halloween is really the only time that I allow myself to unleash my crappy acting on the world by pretending to be someone else. Well, I suppose that's not quite true. Every day, I pretend to be a Nice Person, which is kind of like an extended 30 year acting gig. If this radio malarky continues, I'm going to hang up my tights and unleash the "real me" on the world. And believe me, you don't want that!

Well, that's pretty much it. I have the day off today, so I'm going to go and take care of some chores and schmie around Soho for a bit. Then I'm going to take a really long, long, long nap to try to get rid of the bags that have formed under my eyes from lack of rest. I couldn't get back to sleep this morning, so I put the radio on for a bit. I remember hearing something that really outraged me and I thought that maybe I would write about it in this blog—it was something Dubya was doing (of course!)—but now I can't remember what it was.

Let's just say that I am MAD at you, George W. Bush! I'm just not sure why specifically.

2003-10-30T14:50:00.000-05:00

I KNEW IT!!!

I've always said, always that orange smarties tasted the best! And then I read yesterday that they put orange flavoring in the chocolate of the orange ones, which explains everything.

2003-10-30T09:42:00.000-05:00

Absolutely No Cakes!
So, I'm waiting to go into a meeting that was supposed to start at 9:30, but got delayed for mysterious reasons (or possibly b'c the person who's chairing it hasn't shown up yet).

I will sit in the meeting drinking my petrochemically flavored coffee, wondering what it's all about...

I do that.

Today, my Dad is in town for the Marathon—he referees the race. He does it every year, so every year around this time, we see him for a hurried dinner and then another, slightly less hurried dinner on Monday after it's all over. It's nice to see him without having to go all the way out West. I'm in favor of not having to sit on airplanes for great lengths of time. I hate planes. I like my physics best when it's purely theoretical.

I need a day off. I need to sleep. ERRB (Early Riser Radio Bitch) woke me up again this morning at 5:45. I yelled once, "Please, it's 6 o'clock in the morning. Turn your radio down!" but of course the radio drowned out my plea. So, after a few moments of trying to figure out where the sound was coming from (difficult in an allyway where the sound reverberates all over the shop so that you can't really discern the origin—at least not at six o'clock in the bleedin' morning when you're supposed to be asleep) I took a deep breath and yelled as loudly as I possibly could:

PLEASE..! TURN YOUR RADIO DOWN!

And then in a whisper that no one could possibly have heard, I added, "For fuck's sake it's six o'clock in the sodding morning..."

It was very dramatic! I could have been saying something really heavy like "Please! Spare my son!"—that's how committed I was. And it paid off because "she" switched it off after that. Sadly, though, with all the light streaming in through the window and the aural interruption, it was another half an hour before I managed to fall asleep again. Sucks to be me!

Note, though, that even in my anguished state I still said "please." I mean, I was extremely ticked off at being woken up at all, but that's no excuse for rudeness. It's always a good idea to be polite (especially when yelling). That's just how I was brung up. Cheers, Mum!

See, if ERRB doesn't stop this whole 5:45 AM radio nonesense, there's going to be a major showdown. I will find her! And when I do I will look her square in the eye and say, in my best BBC English:

"Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but I simply must smash your radio into tiny, tiny pieces and then feed each piece to you using this Silver Jubilee commemorative spoon."

And then I will whip out the spoon and brandish it, all the while looking like a very menacing Droogie.

No you won't! You'll probably just knock on her door and apologize for not liking Lite Rock. And then you'll probably feel really guilty and buy her some cakes!

I'm not buying any cakes! I'm gonna knock her block off!

Sure, you will. Cuz you are in no way a complete push over.

Maybe I just don't believe in violence. I'm kinda like Ghandi...

Not believing in something is not the same as being a coward about it.

Listen, I'm not buying her any cakes!

It's good that you're putting your foot down.

2003-10-29T10:50:00.000-05:00

Grrrrrrr
I'm in a funk today—and not in a Bootsy Collins way either. My funk is primarily based on the following factors:

1. Went out last night where loud music was played. Although I had fun, I drank caffeinated beverages, which kept me awake till the wee hours.
2. Got woken up this morning at 5:45 by Early Riser Radio Bitch—the one with the incredibly loud radio alarm. Again, I had to YELL out of the window to get "her" to turn it down.

On a side note, why am I so convinced it's a "her"? I have no basis for this assumption. I just assume "she" is a she because I picture "her" as some middle-aged, saggy "Jean Teasdale" type. Why? Well, the radio is tuned to some crapass lite rock station and, y'know, who else would listen to that kind of thing but a Jean sodding Teasdale resembler?

3. It's Wednesday. Nuff said.
4. It rained this morning. My walk to work was beset with umbrella negotiations and puddle avoidance. I listened to Iggy.
5. I can't control how I feel about things using Logic, and this pisses me off no end. Feck. It's no good. What possible benefit can there be from deciding the best path to take under a given set of parameters, and then not being able to take that path because of stupid emotional shit getting in the way? My mind is completely clouded with irrelevant shit, but I can't seem to get past any of it. At least not today, right now. Yet again, my stupid, crappy human brain is getting in the way of things.

Well, anyway. All I can say is this:

BUGGERY SODDING BOLLOCKS

2003-10-28T13:39:00.000-05:00

Splitting the Difference
At one point, yes, I was going to go to Halloween as Nancy Spungen; and, yes, then I did change my mind after seeing Kill Bill and decide to go as Gogo Yubari; and finally, yes, I did change my mind back again to Nancy Spungen for various reasons relating to the practicality of said ensemblages.

Anyway, last night S. and I trudged around in the rain looking for costumes. What a hassle! I found a delightful skirt at Screaming Mimi's, though, and basically, it's a school skirt so now I'm splitting the difference on the two costume ideas and am officially announcing today, in this blog, right here, at this auspicious moment in History, that I am going to Halloween as...

A School Piece

But not just any school piece. There's a story behind my costume (a story to which only I—and now, you—will be privy). Basically, I'm going as a School Piece who has ditched school and bussed it into Manhattan to hang out on the Bowery with Dee Dee Ramone. She didn't have time to change into full PUNK REGALIA, so she's had to make do with the school uniform, a bit of back combing of the hair, and some hastily applied eyeliner. That's the story. All I need is a school-resembling tie and I'm done! Hurrah! No more Halloween-related worries for me, then.

I wish I'd kept my old school tie sometimes. It was black with yellow stripes and we used to pick the yellow thread out and then get into trouble if we got caught with less yellow than we were supposed to have. The main prosecutor of all yellow-stripe-deficiency infractions was the deputy headmaster, Mr. Bottle who was pathalogically obssessed with Trains. Every bloody year, he would go on a Summer Holiday to Wales where he would board the Festiniog Railway line armed with a camera and (I presume) some sandwiches made by his Wife, Mrs. Bottle, who taught Cooking (and was very tall). Then, after the school holidays were over, we would have to sit through an entire assembly of Festiniog Railway slides.

I wonder what became of Mr Bottle? He's probably still at it. Well, good for him, I suppose. He's probably the only person left who rides the Festiniog Railway. I doubt famous Welshwoman Catherine Zeta Jones ever bothers to ride the Festiniog Railway—not when she's got Michael Douglas and fourteen Lear Jets...

Top.

2003-10-28T11:21:00.000-05:00

I have the following songs in my head right now:

Strange Little Girl - The Stranglers
The Passenger - Iggy Pop
Star Guitar - the Chemical Brothers
Joleen - Dolly Parton

It makes me desperately want to make a mix CD, but of course I haven't pulled my finger out yet on the whole Fixing the Computer situation. I am so lazy. I need an assistant who will take care of things for me.

Today I had a minor eppy (well, not really) over the whole "Joanne" thing.

Who's Joanne? Are you going to fight her? I smell a catfight!

No, you're barking up the wrong tree. Joanne isn't actually a person. There won't be any fights.

That's too bad. It's been ages since you had a good fight.

That's true. The last fight I had was in Middle school (Manor High School). It was with some of the girls in the Chemistry lab. Mrs Cattermole was out having a crafty fag by the bikesheds—we could see her from the window! I don't remember how it started, but basically some hard girls ganged up on me, ripped out a bunch of my hair, and then P.M. stepped in and helped me take them on.

Who won?

Nobody wins when violence takes hold.

Uh huh. Really, who won?

We did! I think! I kinda blacked out from the trauma. P.M. took over and saved the say. Bless.

You're such a weed! You can't even have a proper fight! Didn't you also lose horribly when you fought E.D. that time?

Yes. Thanks for bringing that up...She kicked my arse. Why do girls always pull your hair out?

Because it HURTS like a motherfucker and when you're fighting a girl, it's all about PAIN and the quickest way to inflict it.

Yeah. Girls are alright!

So what's the Joanne thing?

Joanne is what everybody calls me. Usually I'm too much of a weakling to mention that Joanne isn't my name.

Also, it seems rather trivial...

Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it's almost my name, and there's nothing strange about mixing up Joanna and Joanne, but on the other hand, Joanne isn't my name...

So you got all pissy when someone called you Joanne?

No! I just told the person that it wasn't Joanne. But then I felt like SHIT for even saying anything. That's the trouble, see. Because it is quite a trivial thing, except that it isn't.

You're a nob

I know.

You probably made the person feel bad!

God, I hope not...

So you're in a full-on shame spiral?

Yup.

Why are you mentioning it your blog? What if the person reads it..?

Well, I can't let that kind of thing stop me from saying what I want to say. If everybody always worried about who the audience might be, nobody would ever write anything personal.

Well, Thomas Hardy waited until Emma was dead before he wrote about her.

Dude. Don't mention Thomas Hardy unless you want to throw down. TH is my Boy. But those Poems of 1912 or whatever really annoyed me.

How come?

Because the dude ignored his wife horribly while she was alive and made a TON of cash writing poems about her after she copped it. And all the poems were about how pissed off he was that she didn't tell him she was going to die. What a git!

Men are such bastards...

They are. But that's why we like them!

Maybe that's why you like them, Joanne...

Word.

2003-10-27T15:03:00.000-05:00

Renee

2003-10-27T10:56:00.000-05:00

At the Top of the Slide...
If you like angst-ridden indy bands, you'll love the new album, Logic Will Break Your Heart by Montreal's favorite angst-ridden indy band, The Stills. It's on sale at Virgin ($9.99) right now. Go get it! I did. I listened to it several times yesterday while I was having a tidy round.

I ate a lot of brownies this weekend. Damn, those were some good brownies! I'm very tired today; and the time-change has thrown me off a little. I'm already hungry and it's technically only about 11 o'clock.

Time for elevensies, then?

Well, yes, but if I want elevensies, I'll have to go aaaaaall the way downstairs to the shop and buy a snack and this would involve effort, and I'm not really into that right now.

Get off your bloomin' arse and go to the shop, will you.

Make me!

Don't think I won't!

Fah! You don't have the balls!

Oh, really!?

YEAH!

Shit. You're right...I don't.

Arguing is fun!

Well, I should probably venture down to the shop anyway, otherwise I will be grumpy from low blood sugar and an empty tum. I really want to go back to bed now. This week is going to be another busy week. Tuesday is the Heeb Magazine launch party, Thursday my Dad is in town for the Marathon, Friday is Halloween, and then inbetween all that I have a sh*t load of freelance work to do, which is making me INSANE because I'm still having a lot of computer-related problems AND the clients' servers are also really messed up—but you can't use that kind of thing as an excuse.

gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Phew.

Alright. Time to go to the shops.

2003-10-26T14:25:00.000-05:00

Sunday, Muggy Sunday
It's really muggy today in NYC in case you were wondering...

I am currently listening to The Rapture.

I'm tired and I need to clean my room. Its messiness is clouding my mind. When my mind is clouded, I cannot fight evil. When I cannot fight evil, evil's tyranny triumphs. And that's baaad. Bad, bad triumphant evil.

Anyway, here is a pictoral essay (with captions) of what I did last night:

1. I went to see Echo & the Bunnymen at Webster Hall...

2. For some reason, even after the first really crappy picture where you couldn't actually see The Mac, I took another one...

3. Then I went to C's birthday party in Greenpoint, BK...

4. B Man, S and FG were there...

5. I got drunk on sissy malt liquor drinx...

6. There were some quasi-Hipster types there. They didn't talk to us, nor we to them...

7. So we just chilled on the settee and took silly pictures of ourselves...

8. Everybody had a wonderful time...

9. Eventually, I played Pool...

10. This guy was my Pool partner. We lost; and he also accidentally burnt me with the end of his cigarette (I wondered if it was because we lost)...

11. There was a guy there wearing a MARADONA footy jersey. I gave him sh*t for it, but he was a good sport about it (eventually) and even let me photograph his ass at the end of the night...

And that was Saturday. I crashed on B & FG's sofa and then we had brunch this morning in Queens. I'm all about the Boroughs...

The Bunnymen gig was excellent, too! They are magical! Do I really even need to mention that, though? I mean, it's so obvious! Ian M has amazing stage presence! Woo Hoo!

Alright, I'm off to tidy my room now. Lots of evil to fight this week.

2003-10-24T13:54:00.000-04:00

...and Finally: Two More
And here are two from S's camera:

[T, Me, D'cifer, J, MrJ]

[This is the one I took of H, Gina Gershon, and S]

2003-10-24T12:56:00.000-04:00

Pictures!
Here are some of the pix Twinkle snapped at the 'do last night [for more picture-y goodness, check out www.lugolounge.com].

[Twinkle, Me]

[S in a nice candid moment]

[Me, S.]

[Ditto, only w/out the posing!]

[D'cifer looks in awe at his first ever "drink"]

[J, MrJ, S]

[Me & My Beverage!]

[Me, D'cifer]

[Twinkle, Me, D'cifer, J and MrJ]

[T, Me, S]

["It's been a laugh"]

2003-10-24T09:44:00.000-04:00

White Pantsuit Part II
I had so much fun last night! We went to the Absolut Out event at the Versace store on 5th Ave. It was a good excuse to go into the store because otherwise there's no way I would have had any reason to be in there. There were 5 floors of free booze, hors, music, tiny cupcakes, a casino room, some dancin', a tarot card reader, more booze, and about 10,000 gorgeous gays (genus: uptown).

I got my tarot done and, as with all good tarot shit, it was eerily spot on. Just general enough for me to be able to apply it to a specific area of my life. Nearly every card had a sword or swords on it, which even the Tarot Gay found surprising! I guess I should go ahead and get that sex change operation...

Nah, actually, the reading was basically about how I am holding onto the past too much and it is preventing me from moving forward. Of course it is, silly! We all suffer from that; but somehow it seems truer when you're derrrunk and surrounded by gorgeous Versace accessories. I could feel the presence of Donatella telling me in that deep, raspy voice of hers, "Daaaahlink, get over the past and let good things hhhhhhaaaaappen. Now geddooooout of my sight!"

When I emerged from the tarot room, I almost stepped on teeny tiny moviestar Gina Gershon. Ohmigod I thought, It's Krystal!! For those of you who know how much I love the movie Showgirls, then you know it was kind of thrilling to be almost stepping on flippin' Krystal from Showgirls!

S., who was even more drunk than I, went up to her and said "Hi, I'm from ______ Magazine can we take your picture for the Events page?" GG was kind enough to pose for a photo with S. and S's assistant H (I just took the picture). I'm not sure that GG believed S was who she said she was, so I hope the shot actually does make it to the events page to prove that we were not full of crap!

We milled around a little more, ate some tiny cupcakes, drank some drinks, and danced a little. I lost half my comp money at the roulette wheel and then the rest of it at the craps table. I don't understand craps, but I think the idea is that you just give the craps guy all your chips upfront and then you walk away in search of hors d'oeuvres. That's the way I play it, it seems.

As I was walking up the stairs, I locked eyes with a tall, dark haired dude who looked familiar. He looked back for a split second—just enough time to realize that I wasn't "anyone" and that there was no need to look at me. It was ubermodel/dummy Marcus Shenkenberg who is actually very tall. So we went over to schmooze him up a little and S took a picture of him with her editor (again, for the events page). I think the rule of thumb is that models are really tall, but moviestars are pocket-sized. I could have folded little Gina Gershon up and put her in my tiny, tiny handbag. Oh, and I forgot the whole point of mentioning her: the flawless white pantsuit! That's the second one I've seen in as many days. I think Bianca Jagger is controlling fashion with her Studio 54 mind rays, and thank god because the white pantsuits are fabulous and I think we should all start wearing them (yes, even you, Twinkle!). Anyway, she (GG) looked amazing and extremely tiny. Now you see how Tom Cruise can be so short and still be a famous movie star. It's all about proportion.

Let's see, what else. Well, J., Mr. J. and D'cifer were there at one point but they left before the Tarot Reading/Gina Gershon photographing fun, which was a shame! At one point, D'cifer and I had a pseudo-scandalous moment when I knelt down in front of him to do up the laces on his leather pants. Apparently, several onlookers thought I was giving an impromptu blow job and actually stopped to stare at us. How dissapointed they were to find that nothing very exciting was happening after all. Next time, eh... Oh, and I ate RED MEAT (like I say, I'll eat ANYTHING as long as it's in hors d'oeuvre form!) and got a "free" umberella as I was walking out the door! Sadly, by the time we left, all the gift bags were gone (I think Gina Gershon took them all!); but we did get to take a car service home, which was really nice because it was soooo cold last night.

I left work a little early yesterday because I was feeling pretty unwell. My stomach was really iffy. I went home and drank a large bottle of water, hoping that would help. It didn't. I made it to the party thinking, "God, at this rate I'm not going to last half an hour" but funnily enough, as soon as I got some free vodka down me, I felt miraculously better. I really did! My stomach ache went completely away and I felt about a million times better. I wonder what that's about...

Anyway, so that was my night. So fun! Tonight I am doing laundry. Such is the rollercoaster that I call "My Life."

2003-10-23T09:44:00.000-04:00

Even if My Voice is Weak, My Message is Strong
...So said Wes Clark this morning in one of his many emails to me. It's funny how he takes the time to write to me. I guess he knows that I care about America and that I don't want to see it get flushed down the toilet by the Bush Administration. So, Wes writes to me on a regular basis to keep me updated on what he's doing. This week, he's in New Hampshire getting over a bout of laryngitis while he puts the finishing touches on his Economic Plan. His email reminded me of an email I received many years ago from Elizabeth I. In it she said, "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King!"

It's nice to get email.

So, the latest Friendster addiction update is that I have vowed not to log into Friendster unless I get an email telling me that someone has requested me, or responded to a request, or added a testimonial or whatnot. This was going really well until I checked my email this morning to find that K. had added me as his "friend"ster. So, I had to go in and write him a nice testimonial.

When will it end..?

The worse part is that last night, Mr. J, Twinkle, M. and I all stood around for, like, ten full minutes talking about how amusing our testimonials were! I think we all need electroshock treatment or something. We're all such fucking losers, but I love us! And you know, if being a loser in such superlative company is wrong, then baby I don't wanna be right!

The Joke is On Me
(Sorry about the crap title, but I'm really tired. I didn't get to sleep till about 4 AM last night).

Anyway, last night was the CMJ Music Marathon at Webster Hall, which is only 10 minutes' walk from my house. Top. Anyway, suffice it to say that Killing Joke were kinda CRAP! They didn't play anything that I remembered from my youth (not that I remembered a whole hell of a lot, seeing as I was never "into" them). They were entertaining enough, but the music they were playing was waaaaaaay too much like Pantera or one of those "hard" bands for me. I don't like that sort of thing!

However, two of the bands that were on before were really great, so the evening was not remotely a loss! The first band was Black Box Recorder whom I've read about in Q Magazine a few times. Their singer was dressed in a flawless customized white pantsuit a la Bianca Jagger. She looked fabulous! Songs weren't half bad neither.

Next up was VHS or Beta who sounded like The Rapture, which is a good thing! At one point, I developed a MASSIVE crush on their bass player! His hair was so special! But then I realized that he kind of reminded me of D because he was 1. a bass player with jet black hair; and 2. wearing D's uniform of jeans and a blue shirt, so I had to kind of re-think my crush (although if he's around, I'd still like to make out with him—the VHS or Beta guy, I mean).

Anyway, we stood next to a group of slightly older dudes, one of whom was Stanford from Sex and the City (who, by the way, is not gay in real life—not that it matters, except that J. told me that she stood right next to him and said "He's not gay in real life" and then realized that he was standing right next to her doh!). At one point I had to listen to him and his friend talking about music and how "...Yeah, Dave Grohl told me yesterday that..." and I had to roll my eyes at the name dropping! Although, of course, you should be rolling your eyes right now as well because I just re-dropped the name, which is even worse!

At one point, J. and I ventured downstairs to check out the merchandize. While J. bought some T-Shirts, who should saunter in but my, uh, arch nemesis: C. from Interpol. He's not really my nemesis, of course, because he has no recollection of ever meeting me—which is exactly why he is my nemesis! J. has had the same experience ("I've met that guy several times and he never remembers me"), so we both had a secret laugh at him as he walked by. Yeah! That'll show him not to mess with the Honikmans.

I'm not very nice, am I? Ah well, fuck it...

The drinks were outrageously expensive. At one point I bought two diet cokes and a Jack & Coke and the bill was Nineteen Dollars US. I almost spit out my gum when the barkeep told me the damage. Then I thought she was joking, but alas...All I can say is that the drinx better be cheaper on Saturday when we return to Webster Hall to see The Bunnymen.

And that's it. It's Thursday, the unofficial Start to the Weekend. Tonight, thanks to the lovely S, we are all going to the Versace Out event thingy, which is basically a cocktail party at the Versace store on 5th to celebrate national Coming Out day. I plan to Come Out and begin what I hope will be an illustrious career as a Fabulous Lesbian. And if that doesn't work out, I will Come Out again as a Gay Man. Listen, whatever gets me to some booty...

And that's today's "blog."

2003-10-22T15:26:00.000-04:00

Elliot Smith
Elliot Smith died today—an apparent suicide. I have two of his albums, which I listened to quite intensively in early 2001 when I was living/working up in Seattle. The two albums (X/O and Figure 8) were filled with very beautiful, but extremely depressing, music. I haven't listened to them since I moved to New York (a little over 2 years ago) and I probably won't ever listen to them again—especially not now.

Well, I have nothing profound to say about Smith, or about suicide. I'm sorry he felt so desperate. I wonder what happened.

2003-10-22T10:31:00.000-04:00

More on Jet
This just in: Twinkle's stellar review of the Jet album: Read it by clicking here...no, wait, here. Also, yesterday I heard Are You Gonna Be My Girl on an iPod add. Yikes! It was yer basic iPod 'mershal full of youngsters leaping around with their iPods. Kinda reminded me of an ad for Target. I was in mid convo at the time, so I stopped, pointed at the TV and yelled "JET!" I was kinda like Donald Sutherland in the '70s remake of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, right at the end where it's just him SCREAMING and pointing while the credits roll because he's one of the pod people.

(I wonder whatever became of that dog with the man's head..? That was the most chilling part of the movie.)

Anyway, I'm trying not to let the iPod commercial affect my enjoyment of the album. But I do have a slight pang now when I listen to AYGBMG. Is the bloom off the rose on Jet..? Aw, nah. It's still on!

Also, NeeNee tells me via email that The OC will be back on Faux next week (10/29). PHEW! I mean, how much longer was I going to have to wait for my Russel Crowe-Resembling Teen Angst? I need that Russel Crowe-Resembling Teen Angst, damn it!

We all need it! And now, thank g-d, we're going to get it.

2003-10-22T09:38:00.000-04:00

...From a Bloke From Brazil
Hi. Tonight is Killing Joke at Webster Hall. Actually, it's the CMJ Music Marathon, but that sounds a little geeky, so I'm pretending it's just The Joke.

Here's the line-up:
8:00 pm The Fever
9:00 pm Black Box Recorder
9:00 pm Liquid Todd
10:00 pm VHS or Beta
10:30 pm Blowoff
11:00 pm Killing Joke
12:00 am My Morning Jacket
12:00 am D:FUSE
1:00 am The New Deal

At least My Morning Jacket and Killing Joke are next to each other on the bill. The Joke aren't going on till 11, so there's no point even getting there until, like 10:30. The whole thing calls for a Disco Nap.

Oddly enough, I've never ever been to a gig at Webster Hall. I walk past it every morning on my way to work, though; and this week I'm seeing two gigs there (Bunnymen is on Saturday).

A woman (I'm assuming) in my building likes to wake up at 5:45 on weekday mornings. Well, I say like, but that is perhaps a little presumptuous of me. She probably hates waking up just as much as I hate being woken up by her, which happens, as I mentioned, at 5:45 every sodding morning. "She" puts her radio (or perhaps a mix tape) on and blares it out of the window. I had to yell for "her" to turn it down this morning. Perhaps she has an early morning O-Chem class, or maybe she has a job working at an NYU dining hall. Either way, she must have a screw loose if she thinks it's ok to blast Stevie Nicks ("Just like the white winged dove sings a song sounds like she's singing woo woo woo" Shaaaaa daaaaaaap!) at a quarter to six when normal people are trying to sleep.

My alarm goes off at 7 and I snooze it until 7:45. 7:45 is my bathroom window—not the literal one, though (that's actually in the bathroom). Anyway, I have the radio tuned to NPR so I wake up to the news, but since I'm snoozing, I have this 45 minute interude of half-real, half-imagined dreams where real snippets of actual news will filter in to my dreams. Some of them are pretty cool, like this morning when I had to vote on a UN resolution by putting on a particular pair of socks. The socks indicated my vote, but I couldn't find the correct pair due to the Zimbabwean second quarter sock shortfall and almost voted the wrong way!

I'm glad we don't vote with our socks, although it's probably less open to abuse and corruption than the way in which we currently vote ["President" Bush?]. However, if we did vote by putting on some socks, my vote would always be for Hong Kong Phooey and the 5 - 1 smashing of the German national footy team by the glorious England squad.

I'm political, me.

2003-10-21T19:53:00.000-04:00

Right you are, then:

2003-10-21T17:11:00.000-04:00

I FOUND MY SOCKS!!!

That's right! I found my commemorative socks—the ones commemorating England's 5 - 1 victory over Germany in that now-legendary World Cup '02 qualifying match. I can't believe how flippin' top that is! They were in a drawer in my cubicle RIGHT HERE IN MY OFFICE right next to my FAVORITE SUPERGRASS T-SHIRT (the one from the X-Ray Tour) that I also thought I had lost.

Result!

2003-10-21T11:14:00.000-04:00

If you know J, then you know that she has The Mona Lisa as her primary picture on Friendster (I think I have a slight friendster addiction problem happening at the mo...). This got me thinking about Art and what painting I would choose to represent me if I couldn't use a photograph of myself (or a photograph of a chimp).

When I was a wee lass, most of my friends (apart from one: Z) were fair-haired and very English-looking, which made me feel a bit weird—especially since my hair was kind of big and curly (frizzy if I didn't watch it). Growing up, I always felt slightly freakish (although it was mostly all in my own head)! Then, one happy day, Freshman year of college, I happened across Bouguereau's pictures of, I presume, French peasant girls hanging out in pastoral settings. They kinda looked like me a little! Alright!

As you can imagine, this was a really great thing to discover.

So, if I had to represent myself using an existing painting (like J with the Mona Lisa), I would use this one. It's called Shepherdess [Click image to Enlarge] and it's got a Shepherdess in it—a pretty crappy one by the looks of it (no sheep anywhere in sight).

Now, I invite you to pony up the painting/piece of art that you feel most represents you. Let's have a look at yours...

2003-10-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

This Just In
Complete change of tack on Halloween cossy. Nancy Spungen is out. Am now going as Gogo Yubari. Any excuse to wear school uniform and carry a souped up mace.

Anyone know where I can get a plastic mace..?

2003-10-20T11:03:00.000-04:00

Our little Drewcifer has a blog! Mummy is so proud!

Devil Au Pair
I just finished my mid-morning snack—my elevensies, if you like (which I do). I ate a "zone bar." It was alright. It'll tide me over till lunch.

Last night I got up in the middle of the night and tried to figure out what was bothering me so much that I had to get up in the middle of the night to figure it out. I wrote some things down in an attempt to filter out all the stuff that was pissing me off that wasn't really part of the core agita, but was just globbing onto it, kinda like tiny steel filings globbing onto a magnet. Usually, when I'm feeling this way, it's because of One Thing that I can't seem to put my finger on. Basically, this One Thing will piss me off, but I won't really know what it is, or be aware that it is to blame for my annoyance, so I'll just feel pissed off about a lot of little things (the steel filings) that will plague me during the night when I should be sleeping. Instead of dreaming about, say, George Clooney showing up at my door with a box full of cakes, I'm lying awake listening to the clang of the heating pipes. It's not right...

That's why it helps to, as my mother says, "Make a list."

So I got up, switched on the Ikea "Lista" lamp, and made a list.

I won't share the entire contents of the list because some of it is deeply personal (i.e. boring)! But here's the general List gist:

Stuff That is Pissing Me Off Right Now
1. My desktop motherboard is kaput
This causes agita because
  i. I can't make mix CDs, which makes the morning commute less fun; and,
  ii. It's more difficult to do freelance work on the laptop. This causes all freelance work to be a chore and to take longer to do, which leaves less time for fun things.
Solution: FIX TOWER IMMEDIATELY. Priotity One.

2. I don't have a decent full-length mirror.
This causes agita because
  i. I can't ever see what my outfit looks like until I get to where I'm going in it; and,
  ii. I can't have outfit trying on sessions, which means I keep wearing the same flipping clothes all the time, which is boring.
Solution: Go to Crate, or PB or wherever and invest in a well-made, non-warped mirror this weekend, you complete nelly. Priority Three.

So, there you go. It sounds really lame, but it actually works! Instead of feeling grumpy, I have a list of tangibles: buy new motherboard; go and get a mirror, etc. These are things that can be done; and once they're done, the problems associated with them will also be done.

I guess it's the developer (Devil Au Pair) geek in me, but I find that it helps to break problems down into simple algorythmic solutions. An algorythm is just a fancy pants word for a List of Instructions after all. Without this approach, I seem to just flail around in confusion, not knowing what to do. I can't believe it took me, like, 5 years (I only really started doing this a few months ago) to connect the dots and start applying the Devil Au Pair Method that I use evey single sodding day in my job to Real Life.

When I behave like a Devil Au Pair, I find that shit gets done and problems get solved in no time. It's pretty cool.

So, back to my midnight list-making: Although I didn't figure out what is really pissing me off, I was able to fall asleep pretty quickly after I made my list. As long as I complete the tasks outlined therein, at the very least some of the things that are pissing me off right now will go away.

I can't control everything that happens to me, or that happens in the world, so the best I can do is exercise control over material things like my computer, or my furniture. Instead of focusing on what I can't control, I have basically resigned myself to fighting the battles I know I can win first. That way, when I do eventually figure out that One Thing that is at the core of all my angst, I won't be tied up in knots, devoting all my resources to all the mundane stuff that I should have taken care of already.

And that's today's philosophical treatise. Go forth and make lists!

2003-10-19T18:44:00.000-04:00

Kill Bill (Uh, Volume 1)
Well, I liked it a lot. Let's just get that out of the way so that you know what my agenda is before we get started. I'm not going to buy you dinner or waste time asking you about yourself, pretending that I'm interested in "who you are" when it's obvious what I'm after. I won't do that with this review—you're too cool for that.

It was top. I dunno. Why are you asking me if it was "better" than Pulp Fiction? It was a different movie altogether. I wouldn't have minded seeing the whole thing all at once, but there was a rather nice cliff-hanger at the end. Back in the day, they used to have "intermissions" in movies that were long. Basically—and do try to keep up because some of these concepts might be new to you—roughly halfway through the film, the music would swell and a frame reading "Intermission" would be displayed in place of the "moving picture." The lights would come up and everybody to run to the loo and then, on the way back, stop off at the concession stand to get more snax.

They don't do that these days because it's all about the bottom line and bums on seats and weekend grosses. This means that if your movie is long, you have to chop it up into bits and charge people $10 for each bit.

With this movie, I don't really mind, though, because it is highly entertaining. Uma is badass, as you gathered from the previews. Daryl Hannah's outfits are flawless—especially the Marc Jacobs-resembling trench coat she wears. Oh, god...I very nearly had a sartorially-motivated orgasm when I saw it. Genius. Actually, I would like to mention that the art direction was incredible, but I only noticed it when J pointed it out afterwards. But I will say that if you don't notice it, then that's probably a good thing. The whole movie had a cool '70s matinee chop socky feel. It was full of cool Japanese shit like Gogo Yubari the psychotic schoolgirl bodyguard/assassin. It was top! As you would expect, there were lots of scenes were people walked slowly while cool '70s style rock played in the background.

The fight scenes were ebullient. Actually, the whole thing was ebullient from start to finish. There's no "point" to this movie. It's a straight up revenge caper—an excuse for a lot of cool set pieces, outfits you wish you had, and close ups of Uma looking really special. I dug it. I even liked the Anime bit in the middle.

I've read criticisms of this film, but they all seem to miss the, I thought, quite salient point that this movie is not meant to be realistic. It's just an excuse to see a lot of cool action shots, hear some dialog that will probably be on the soundtrack, and just observe a whole world of weirdness while you nosh Twizlers in the dark.

When I was small, we went to matinees all the time at the cinema in Oadby (closed now, sadly). It was a flea pit with crappy seats and a shitty screen full of weird ripped bits and dirt. We would watch movies like "Sinbad"—those cool movies with the claymation fight sequences. It was pure escapism, pure fun. Kill Bill was like that only for grown upz.

I'd love to stick around and describe some of the really cool set pieces (there were many—in fact, the whole thing was basically a series of cool set pieces strung together with a top-notch soundtrack with additional material by Rza!), but I really can't be bothered. I want to go and eat my dinner now. I'm tired. I need a nap. I want to start reading Quicksilver. I want to take a bath and listen to some T-Rex and then watch The Office at 9 o'clock.

You would do the same, if you were me.

2003-10-19T16:30:00.000-04:00

Small Shit Gets Done
A lot of small shit got done this weekend. A lot of big shit didn't get done, but that's the consequence of looking after the small shit. Here's what got done:

1. A Halloween costume was decided upon (Nancy Spungen); a wig was purchased (blonde); a dog collar was secured (Thanks, D.)
2. Brunch was had at Nadine's.
3. A gorgeous, fabulous plum colored coat was purchased.
4. Hair was given a shampoo & trim.
5. Quicksilver was obtained from that bookstore opposite the Magnolia Bakery (you know the one).
6. Kill Bill was seen and enjoyed [review to follow].
7. Some freelance work was done; but then some procrastination got in the way [see: this blog entry].
8. The cold wash was done, hung up to dry, dried, folded, and put away.
9. Large quantities of coffee and water were consumed.

I want my other computer to work. I want to make mix CDs and mess with the fruity loops. Waaaaaaaaaa. Daddy, I want an oompa loompa now.

It's Sunday afternoon. It tried to rain earlier but I think even the weather couldn't be bothered today. It's that sort of day, really. I wish I had nothing to do and could go outside and schmie around for a bit, look at things in the shops, gawk at passersby, and have one of those coffee shop kinda days, but I can't because I have to finish all this sodding coding. Yar. Sometimes I wish I could run away and become a pirate, but I don't want to give up my excellent health benefits and the saltwater would be bad for my hair.

2003-10-18T16:33:00.000-04:00

I'm a Cowboy, on a Steee-ul Horse I Ride
Listening to Jet. Still don't know if they're actually Australian—not that it makes a difference to anything.

Twinkle appears to have had an especially nice time at Ikea yesterday. You can read about it here.

So, I'm becoming strangly fascinated by this whole "Friendster" malarky. I know, I know, it's soooo five minutes ago and I'm late to the show, but whatever, man. All I can say is that I just found my old pal B. and got back in touch with him only to find that he's moved away from San Francisco and is now living a completely different life in SoCal. It's good to catch up! Fond memories of B. include the time he and I made out on Halloween at my Halloween party. He was in drag; I was in my nurse's outfit. It was hot! Then we all went to the Castro and walked around in the rain and I got poked in the eye accidentally. Good times. Halloween is next week!

We're seeing Kill Bill tonight. I hope it doesn't suck. I hope I don't eat too much candy and end up feeling iffy.

The whole "low key" approach that was supposed to be The Approach for this weekend is already not really working. I schlepped my computer to the Gateway store on Union Square—had a terrible time in the cab—only to be told that, uh, actually no this wasn't a service center and that I had to go to LONG ISLAND if I wanted to get the thing fixed.

So, fuck it. I'm just going to sort it out myself. I'll get a compatible motherboard and see what I can do. I can't be arsed to use this stupid laptop any more. It is SHITE. Ugh...

That's about it. Oh, crap! I forgot the whole point of this post: Jet. I'm really enjoying the album! They are clearly very heavily influenced by a number of top bands, most notably T-Rex (on the 12th song, esp.) and Iggy & the Stooges, but I also noticed a hint of Bon Jovi in there as well. It works, though!

So I recommend Jet to you if you like the kind of music I like. The album is called "Get Born." And they're much better than The Vines, who are definitely Australian.

2003-10-17T10:04:00.000-04:00

Got Sucked in a Hole Now There's a Hole in the Sky...
I forgot to mention that J. told me that the Pixies are back together and going on tour! Soon! We are so there! I'm so there that I'm already at the gig—I've traveled through time.

This morning I listened to this band, Jet. I think they might be Australian, but I could be wrong. They're like the Libertines, but not quite because they don't have the old skool English Humor angle going on, but they have Rock 'n' Roll Swagger with a coefficient of, oh, I'd say about 4. And because they are Australian (I think), all of this is multiplied by some Koalas and the whole thing is divided by Fosters beer.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to see that in Rock Algebraic notation

Well, that's what I was thinking, anyway.

Hey, what are you doing this weekend?

Hopefully SOD ALL! I need to rest and catch up on all the freelance work I've been slacking on. Next week is Killing Joke and Echo and the Bunnymen!

What? In the same week!? How will you cope with the sheer AWSOMENESS of it all?

Oh, I'm already completely freaking out over the awsomeness. I may need to go on medication for a while as a result! Bunnymen!!!

2003-10-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

Gonna Stamp Out Your Fire...
So...we kinda spaced on the Broadcast show at Southpaw. I called Twinkle in the A.M. to make arrangements. It went a little something like this...

Me: Hey, so you got the tix, yeah?
Tw: Uh, no I think you got them.
Me: Huh? Naah, you got them.
Tw: No, I think it was you.

[pause]

Me: Oh.

Turns out I hadn't actually bothered to get the tickets, but I wasn't sure, so I called Southpaw to see if there were any tix under my name, but there weren't and the show was sold out. So, we went to see School of Rock instead. It was fun. I liked it.

J. called about 15 minutes after I got home to tell me that T. had just been round to tell her that Bez had been refused entry into the country. Seems he got to JFK and they marched him right back on a plane to England. I guess it's suddenly not "ok" to be a drugged up Madchester raver/celebrity DJ. It must be part of the latest crackdown on People Who Really Don't Do Anybody Any Harm or whatever, but PLEASE! Who'd bez ever hurt? All the man wants to do is shake his maraccas and help you reach the groove that lies within.

Is it me, or has the world just lost its sense of perspective completely?

FREE BEZ!!!

2003-10-16T17:15:00.000-04:00

Bez, formerly of the Happy Mondays, is DJing at Tiswas this week.

2003-10-16T12:18:00.000-04:00

Interpol
The first time I saw Interpol was by accident—a happy one, as it turned out. It was sometime in the Spring of '02 and we were at the Bowery Bee seeing Ash. We walked through the door and I thought they were playing Joy Division, but not any JD I had heard before. I looked to the stage and saw some dudes wearing shirts and ties looking ernest and pained. I thought Crispin Glover was playing bass.

I wasn't expecting anything, so it was a nice surprise to find this really quite good band as the opening act. Opening acts are really hit and miss (mostly miss), so when you get a good one, it's a definite plus to your evening. (Ash were great, too—although the last Ash gig I went to wasn't very good at all! I did have a lovely time at the gig, though, but it had nothing to do with the music...)

So, anyway, here we are in October of 2003 and a lot has changed for Interpol: They are now massive in the UK and Europe; They get written up in Q and X-Ray; They "do" Glastonbury. Basically, they're a "Special New Band" with a big lightshow and a lot of fans who don't mind forking over large wads of cash to see them at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Ahem.

But what do you think of them?

Well, I can't really review them at all because of a particular bias I have: I don't really like the bass player. I've never "met" him, and I don't "know" him, but I've seen him around at various events because he's a friend of a friend of mine. Maybe I'm being too judgmental, but every time he's around, the air just gets icier. Several times, I've stood right next to him with my friend and he has never once acknowledged me—or any one else! Maybe he's just painfully shy or something, but frankly, I think it's very rude. I don't care that he's in a band. I just think that when you're standing at a show or in a club, it's polite to sort of give people a nod, y'know. Practically everyone else I know, whether or not they are in a band, whether or not they are semi-famous fabulous NY types, will nod or, if we've met before say "hello" but this dude, for whatever reason, isn't like that.

I dunno, it just kind of makes me feel really iffy when people do that. It's like a musical note that's off key—it stands out and jars you in a bad way.

The bass player has a morose sidekick who is much the same way. They're like two peas in a concrete pod.

So, I guess I have a bias against Interpol because, for some reason, they just don't seem like a "real" band. It's not that I feel like I "know" them because I don't know them at all. It's just that for various reasons (their sudden elevation in popularity, the bass player's 'tude), I am unable to suspend my disbelief where they are concerned. When I see them, all I can think is, "Oh, there's that dude again..."

I wish I didn't feel that way, though, because apart from that, I do like their music. I'm just not sure that I can really be "into" them in the way that, say, I'm into BRMC. I'm sure most of these indie band dudes are kind of assholes in real life, but as long as I don't have to deal with them as people that's just fine. I guess you project your own emotions onto bands that you like so that when they sing, they're singing for you. I just can't do that with Interpol because the idea of projecting any emotion in their direction really puts me off!

There should be a wall between the artist and the audience, so that the art is what the audience experiences. The personality behind it can get in the way and when it does, the illusion is shattered completely. That's kind of how I feel about Interpol.

So, everyone else seemed to really enjoy themselves, but I really just couldn't get into it. Like I said, I couldn't see them as artists—they just seemed like, well, people.

And where's the magic in that?

2003-10-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

Freakin' JERKer!
Earlier today, a heated argument raged between Twinkle and me over whose IKEA computer desk was better.

Twinkle's desk, Jerker is a paltry affair constructed out of some bits of faux metal and a lot of cheap grey metalic paint. My desk, on the other hand, has its own drawer and a dry-erase bit. My desk is Mikael.

But that's incredible! Surely your desk is the best one?

Well, that's what I said.

Then Twinkle posited that since he has about 800 computers, this somehow necessitates his having a crappy desk—I think that's what he was trying to say.

Anyhoo...

In lieu of being able to best me verbally, Twinkle has resorted to his cache of SAW— Special Art Weaponry—and has fashioned this clever poster (note the use of the SAME BLOODY PICTURE OF ME YET AGAIN), which I have to say, seals his victory in this particular battle in the Great War of Who Has Better Stuff From Ikea.

Twinkle: YOU WIN! Fair dues. But my Rüg rug is better than any piece of carpet you will ever possess! I think we know who the real winner is here.*

*Yes, it's Ikea because they have all our bleedin' money!

2003-10-15T10:43:00.000-04:00

Me & My Spine, We're Fine
Went to Radiology this morning to pick up my chest x-ray and take it over to Employee Elf Services. The nurse looked at it and then said the following:

There's your heart, sitting on your diaphragm, and there's your collar bone and your wonderfully straight spine—you don't have any scoliosis, it's just perfect. Look at your lungs. You don't smoke, do you? No I didn't think so, they're very clean.

So I said, "So I don't actually have TB, then?"

Then she went on: Oh, no, if you had TB it would be up here (points to area of lungs up at the top).

And that was basically it. It was quite nice, actually. I left feeling good about the inside of my chest, which is not something I ever think about even though there's a lot of stuff in there (heart, lungs, spine) that is quite useful. So, nice one for me and my spine, eh. That's right! And, in case you were wondering: YES, my spine could kick YOUR spine's ass any day of the week!

Tonight: The Kids From Fame & I attend Interpol at Hammerstein.
Tomorrow: Twinkle & I journey to Brooklyn to see Broadcast at Southpaw (that's right: BROOKLYN).

Top.

2003-10-14T21:09:00.000-04:00

I'll Need that in Writing
I can't really explain this very well, because I'm a bit jumbled, so I'll do my best and just hope that everybody get's what I'm talking about:

OK. Here it comes...

I got dumped earlier in the Summer. Not a huge deal, but a definite wound to the ego.

The dumper never actually came out and said "You're fired!" but I knew I'd been fired by the fact that the dumper suddenly ceased all contact with me after we had slept together. Classic! After a week, I knew without any doubt that I'd been dumped. I'm smert, y'know.

Yeah, I was bummed! I got a little singed. Ouch: fire hot! Now, compared to the Big Horrible Thing of 2000, it was nothing. The BHT2K was like 1st degree burns over 80% of my body, just to give you the scale. This was more like a nasty steam burn from a boiling kettle. That'll teach me to make tea with hipsters...

(God, now I wish I had a kettle so that I could make some actual tea! I'll put it on my list. I should have bought one while we were at Ikea last week. Damn.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, I was getting my ass royally dumped. What a blow to my fragile ego it was. Especially the not-actually-telling-me part. Not only had I been dumped, but I'd had to kind of dump myself because he had already removed himself from the scene.

So, there I was, feeling like a prize banana. I could have asked around to see what was up with him (we know people in common), but frankly, the idea of even mentioning his name to anyone who knew him was worse than being dumped in the first place, so I just kept my mouth shut and pretended that I basically didn't care anyway cuz I had More Important Shit going on. And then, time wore on and wore me numb (as my pal Tom H. once said) and I stopped feeling pissed off and just put it to one side and went about my business.

Well, time did it's thing, other Stuff happened with other People. I had a lot to think about: I broke up with D., I quit my job, I went to England, I moved house, I started a new job... Except that it wasn't really out of my mind at all. I just didn't let myself think about it—most of the time...

Twice, since THE DUMPING, I started writing an email to the Dude In Question, whom we will henceforth refer to as "DIQ"—although this should not be pronounced "Dick" because that's a cheap shot and frankly, I'd rather not take it—but I trashed the emails before I sent them because what was there to say, really? "Hi, you did dump me, yes?" "Uh, yes. That was what I meant by the complete cessation of all contact with you after we slept together."

I mean, how big of a twat would I have to be to email the DIQ?

I mean how big of a twat would I have to be?

Check it out: I emailed him yesterday after seeing him, quite by accident, on "Friendster."

I think it was the massive, shit-eating grin he had plastered on his mug that did it. It just made me feel all agitated over the whole situation again. I felt really crappy. See, I wanted to be like Samantha from Sex & the City. She shags all kinds of people and she doesn't care if they call her afterwards. She just does her thing and never worries. She gets her jollies and she's out the door. I wanted to be like that in this situation—even at the time, before I got DUMPED I was all "yeah, whatever, I'm breezy". But the problem is that I'm not really like that. I'm not like Samantha. I'm not like any of the characters on the SATC show because I'm mostly non-fictional.

This means that when I GET MY ASS DUMPED, it hurts!

Anyway, so in my squiffy state, I sent the DIQ an email. It was very flip, very noncholant—except that emailing him at all was the very opposite of noncholance, as you are no doubt saying to yourself this very minute. Yeah, I am a sad, sad, pitiful wretch of a person. You don't have to explain this to me.

Anyway, the DIQ emailed back to tell me that he'd spent most of the Summer out of town in the countryside, y'know kinda regrouping his brain. Oh, I thought upon reading this news, that's really nice for the DIQ. How bucolic, how pastoral it must have been for him out there with the grazing sheep and the gentle breezes wafting through the willow trees...

Get to the point, already!

Yes. So, I emailed him back and told him that he had hurt my feelings.

But why would you do that? Why? Why would you do that, you complete arse!?

I don't know! Because I guess I thought he owed me an apology and that since I wasn't going to just get one out of thin air, if I really wanted one, I would just have to ask for one. So I asked.

And did you get one?

Yep.

So, that's it, then

Yep.

So now you feel 100% better about it and will now forget about the whole incident completely.

Um...

Dude!

I know! But I don't really feel better. I don't feel worse. I don't really feel anything, actually, except dissapointment at the ever mounting list of people I've shagged who are not very nice.

Do you think he's a bad person, then?

Not in the aggregate, no. But my interaction with him was not, in its conclusion, agreeable.

huh?

It went PEAR SHAPED. Try reading something other than US Magazine.

I like US Magazine. Halle Berry was in it last week.

I don't really know what this blog entry is about. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I guess I was smitten and I got my ASS KICKED for it. It's a shame, but there it is. What can I say? Is is what it is, it was what it was, etc.

Can't you reach some magnificent yet witty conclusion about mankind and the Fate of human existence or something? Otherwise I feel like I've wasted a lot of time reading this.

I have no conclusion. I feel kinda crap.

Maybe you need to go out with your ACTUAL FRIENDS and get nice and drunk. Why don't you let the sweet, soothing balm of ROCK 'N' ROLL music moisterize your troubles away.

You are probably right. I should do that.

Seriously, don't feel bad. You always do really twattish things anyway. People expect it of you. It's par for The Golf Course of You.

Thank you.

I think you're cool, by the way.

Do you?

Yeah. You're alright. You just need to be more chill and stop thinking with your whatsit.

That is so not what I thought you were going to say.

Well, you do do an awful lot of thinking, and much of it has no origin in your brain. Maybe that's the Thing you're supposed to learn from this blog entry: Use Your Noodle.

I'll try. I really will.

Well then that's alright.

2003-10-14T12:19:00.000-04:00

All is Lost..?
I know that I once said I would try not to get hung up on people and things, but sometimes you have to let yourself become attached. Otherwise, you're not really living. You're just existing in a kind of dull equilibrium. Life is "supposed" to be filled with shit sandwiches and chocolate cakes. A constant stream of savory meat pies makes the soul bleed with boredom.

Or something like that.

The reason I mention this at all is that I have once again fallen into the trap of becoming deeply attached to something, only to lose it.

I have lost my favorite pair of socks.

I've tried to be casual about it. At one point I was almost convinced that they would turn up eventually, or that I could replace them. But deep down, in the 2AM part of my brain that knows what's really going on, I know that they're lost forever.

These were special socks. They were commemorative socks.

What did they commemorate?

We interrupt this post with an important announcement: Someone has been playing silly buggers with Blogger because the rest of this post has been replaced with some random HTML in what looks to be Portuguese, but I could be wrong. Here's the mystery code:

</F.rque trata seus problemas. FaÃ§am <a href='http://www.semheliponto.blogger.com.br/giuliani.pdf' target='_blank' class='one'>aqui</a> o download do press-release traduzido, em PDF.

That really sucks! Here I am writing a post about how I lost my socks, and then the POST gets lost, too. It's like losing the socks all over again.

To summarize: The socks commemorated England's 5 - 1 victory over Germany in a 2001 qualifying match leading up to World Cup '02.

I don't remember what the rest of the post said, but it was essentially that the socks made me feel GOOD because they were so awsome! I also asked that if anyone finds them, or a pair like them, that they send them to me ASAP.

I wonder what the Portuguese was all about...

2003-10-14T10:03:00.000-04:00

So...

Some weeks ago, I went to England and had a lovely time—not that you would know that if all you had to go by were the pictures I took! I suppose I was too busy hanging out to take any decent pictures!

I also finished the roll off at my cousin's wedding. Or, rather, I took the camera to the wedding and various people made off with it and took pictures. 75% of the shots were blurred or too dark or just plain awful, so I won't subject you to them.

Here are the half dozen or so that actually made it!

The Clock Tower, Leicester toon center.

It's not very big, is it.

It was cold that day!

I stayed with the lovely A and T...

The cake in front was actually made by ME and, as with every other cake I've ever made, it went horribly awry. Mostly, it was undercooked and at one point during construction, I had a dizzy turn and accidentally fell into it slightly, leaving a hand-sized hole in the middle. Then the whole thing fell apart when I took it out of the tin, so I basically made 3 times as much icing as was necessary to sort of hold the whole thing together! Oy...

It's a bitter irony that although I love nothing more in this World than cakes, it seems I am doomed to a life of not being able to make any halfway decent cakes myself! Tragic, that.

Anyway, moving swiftly along...

We drank a lot that week.

This is N. He's an apple.

Thank god Z. came round and made the tea.

That's it! That's all the pictures from England.

What!? That's it! Those are all the pictures you took on holiday?

Yup.

But it gets much, much worse!

The England photos look like a pulitzer-prize winning piece of photojournalism when compared to the wedding photos!

Here's an action shot of J. and Mr J. enjoying the swirling matrimony...

And here is the fantastic S.

And that's really IT.

I can't believe I spent $12.90 having these pictures developed!!

And there's not ONE picture of ME in the whole lot! That's the real tragedy here.

*****
In Other News
Got another mailing from Satanicide this morning—although I hardly need reminding about the Halloween show, because we already have our tickets thankyouverymuch.

For the rest of you, here are the details:

Friday, October 31st, 2003 9:30pm
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancy Street NYC

Satanicide 9:30pm
Drive-By Truckers 11pm
Costume Contest, lotsa tasty treats!!

Advance Tickets available at www.ticketweb.com.
"SATANICIDE ARE THE GREATEST HAIR BAND EVER."
Spin Magazine, November 2003

2003-10-13T14:52:00.000-04:00

Hey kids, check out the article about Heeb in the NY Times!

"A Sardonic Jewish Magazine Expands Its Ambitions"

Top!

2003-10-13T09:29:00.000-04:00

I Know Everything Already
So, on the Arnie front, I'm told that he is assembling a group of fairly moderate advisors. This is a good sign. I'm adopting a "Wait and see" stance on this from now on. Send any information you happen across.

Went to IKEA last Friday. I bought a desk, some shelves, a rug, a lamp, and about 800 impulse-buy plastic purple nick-nacks—and all for under $200! I have lately come to the realization that IKEA is an acronym standing for I Know Everything Already. Ikea knows that you need cheap, well-designed furniture for your tiny apartment in the Village. Ikea knows that you secretly crave meatballs and gravlax. Ikea knows everything already.

On Saturday we went out dancin' till the wee hours. We actually got "kicked out" of Tiswas. It was very subtle, though. Basically, they turned the lights on and played "sod off" music. But I didn't really care because I was having such a lovely time.

Yesterday I pottered about a bit and went to see "Intolerable Cruelty." It was alright. No great shakes. It was fun to watch George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones—but only inasmuch as it is always enjoyable to watch attractive people in nice outfits pretending to fall in love. I wouldn't recommend it, though.

Season two of The Office finally started last night on BBC America. It's about BLOODY time! Anyway, as expected, it was BRILLIANT. It is Genius.

That's about all I have to say right now.

2003-10-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in the Quzzling clinic there's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes...

It's Friday. At last. As is the usual MO for Fridays, I will begin today feeling like crap. I went to a thing last night, got a little drunk, and then ate two really horrible slices of pizza that I now heartily regret. In the words of Governor-Elect, Arnie Schwarzenegger, "I deeply regret dat."

However, by 2PM today, after I've had some lunch, I predict that I will magically start to feel really good because it is Friday and the WEEKEND is here!

Friday night is the BEST night for going out and getting into trouble, although I doubt I'll get into too much trouble tonight. Still, when I wake up tomorrow, it'll be Saturday morning, which is the best morning of the week, hands down. So, although I feel a little ragged right now, from here on out it's basically gravy all the way!

Listened to Armed Forces on my way here this morning. There are a disproportionate number of alliterate song titles on this album: Busy Bodies, Moods for Moderns, Chemistry Class, Big Boys, Senior Service... I'm sure this was not coincidental. There's also a nice bit at the end of Party Girl where the middle bit from You Never Give Me Your Money (Beatles) gets incorporated in.

I don't have a point, I'm just mentioning it.

I'm still reading The Cryptonomicon. I'm going at the rate of about 1 hour a night, which is only about 100 pages or so. I'm almost at the end. Bobby Shaftoe just did the thing that he does at the end...

Last night I ate tiny, tiny hors d'oeuvres at the Elle DECO Design Awards, an event entirely masterminded by my room-mate S. She did a fabulous job! I wanted to steal this one really large floral, well, ball, but I didn't want to show her up if I got caught pilfering it. I also made a discovery about myself: I am an hors d'oeuvre whore. A Whore d'oeuvre, if you will. I, and others like me (there were at least 3 of us), hovered around the entrance to the kitchen so that we could pounce on the waiters as they emerged with their trays. After a while, I could swear certain waiters started to try to dodge us! Ha! What they were forgetting was that I wasn't carrying a tray full of tiny pieces of toast and could move in for the kill with waaay more skill and cunning.

Whore d'oeuvres are like wolves in many respects. First, we rove in packs. Second, we will eat just about anything (as long as it is less than 1 inch square). Third, we make plaintive howling noises whenever there's a full moon. Fourth, we have sharp teeth that are excellent for ripping apart mushroom vol au vents.

Well, that's about it.

Have a lovely weekend.

2003-10-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

Vote For Me Anyway!

[Brought to you by The Marle]

This is what you get when you innocently announce in an email that you are a twat. I'm an honest person. I am a bit of a twat. From now on, though, I'm only going to say good things about myself in emails!

I am so awsome, everybody! Send chocolate!

Also, I think it's time for some NEW pictures of me! Does anyone know a really good stylist?

2003-10-08T09:49:00.000-04:00

You Look Like the Back End of a Bus...

[Picture brought to you by Twinkle]

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, BBC World Service came on the air and made an announcement that caused me to bolt upright in my bed. They said that according to exit polls and absentee ballot data, Schwarzenegger had won the California Goobernatorial Pointless Recall Election.

My heart started to race. I felt like I was having some sort of panic attack. I could picture Bush assembling a burlap sack full of neo cons to ship out of CA to work Arnie's strings. Arnie is like a giant vacuum. No, wait, he's like a tiny, tiny singularity in the middle of a massive black hole. Arnie doesn't like "bad" things. Uh, that's cool. He wants things to be "good" for California. Well, me too! I would like things to be "good" for just about everybody, but so what? Show me the candidate who wants things to be bad...

Without any discernible tactics on how to bring about all this goodness, Arnie is surrounded by a giant vacuum into which, I predict, a whole lot of really dangerous shit is going to get sucked. That's my prediction. I hope to god I am wrong and that some miracle ocurrs and Arnie does a fabulous job. Although, if he does too fabulous a job, this will bolster republican support in California and we may lose the state to the republicans next year. But you know what, I would like to think that Californians are a leeetle smarter than that. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

In addition to his strong position on "things being good", Arnie is also presumably against such things as eating babies for breakfast, unleashing dragons in populated areas, and lining the freeway with millions and millions of sharp tacks. Thank god somebody is finally standing up against sharp tacks and unfettered dragons because by god those things need to be dealt with! God knows Gray Davis and his democrats weren't interested in combatting the millions of baby munchers that plague our nation.

It's hard to disagree with someone when they travel around the country saying things like this:

"I came here in a bus!"

[cue applause, murmers of "bus! He came here in a bus!" throughout crowd]

"Children...

[wait for applause]

...Children are shorter than adults!

[crowd errupts in hearty cheering]

"...Unless the adults are midgets!"

[crowd goes COMPLETELY BONKERS! Abe Lincoln's corpse begins to spin in its grave]

See, that's Arnie's campaign style. At one point, he gave a rousing speech about how he was expecting 2000 people to show up, and then 5000 people showed up! Never mind that he had no way of knowing how many people were there anyway. Ugh! It seems like people will cheer at anything these days.

Where are the ideas where are the concrete plans? The problem is that Arnie has no earthly way (none that I can see, anyway) of actually achieving any of the very general, all-encompasing goals he has promised to achieve. He's going to need help with everything. This means that he's probably not going to be doing a lot of governing himself. He'll be the public face, but the actual policy decisions will be put together by WHO THE HELL KNOWS!!??? Most likely, as I mentioned, Bushy will send him some hidden-agenda laden neo-cons who will shape every argument to suit their own ends. This is how it works. You might ask me to go out and put together a list of the top ten bands in America today and what do you think I'm going to say? Brittney Spears? No way, my list will be completely biased toward indie bands and you'll come away thinking that the entire country is into The Black Rebel Motorcyle Club. Arnie's advisors are going to mold and spin every argument to suit their ultra conservative agenda.

This is my FEAR right now. I don't really know how much sway Cruz Bustamente is going to have in the face of this. He's still Lt. Governor, but what does that really mean? Is he going to be a true check & balance, or will the force of the Terminator (and the evil machines who seek to reprogram him) be too strong for Cruz?

I don't think Arnie is a bad guy. I like him a lot more than I like a lot of the Republicans who are around today. But he has ZERO experience running anything and this worries me. He's about to be put in charge of the 5th largest economy in the world and his only credentials are that he was in a movie with Emma Thompson. If I thought that Arnie was actually going to be running the show, I might be less worried than I am. I mean the worst he would do is cock things up completely and then get recalled...

As it is, I'm really freaked out.

2003-10-07T14:39:00.000-04:00

Word Up
To take my mind of The Unfortunate Event (viz. the tragic Supergrass cancellation—like you didn't know...), I have decided to introduce a new Thing, which I will be calling "My Favorite Word."

Oooh, is that like My Favorite Wife? The screwball classic starring Irene Dunn and yer man Cary Grant?

No, but that is a delightful film.

My Favorite Word will focus on a particular word that I happen to like. Using a dictionary and thesaurus, we will explore both its etymology and common usage. Then we break for lunch. After lunch, we will google the word; and, finally, we will type it into our Browser's address bar to see if it has its own domain.

Yes, it's going to be an exciting ride! Buckle your seatbelts and swaddle the children, because it's about to get crazy.

My Favorite Word is not designed to introduce you to new words per se, but more to highlight particular words that I happen to like the sound of, or the meaning(s) of. As you know, my all-time favorite word is fuck because it has so many uses and is easy to spell.

Sorry, should I have written fuck as "F**k"?

The inaugural My Favorite Word word will be...

Quotidian

What is it?
Webster's dictionary defines it thus:
Everyday; commonplace: “There's nothing quite like a real... train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute” (Anita Diamant).
Recurring daily. Used especially of attacks of malaria.

(oooh, malaria! Tropical!)

Quotidian comes from the Latin word, cotidie, meaning daily, or everyday. Makes sense.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Webster's Thesaurus gives the following synonyms:

daily, everyday, hackneyed, ordinary, ordinary, plain, routine, usual...

The list goes on forever, so here are the highlights:

circadian, diurnal, accustomed, habitual, mundane, starch, stock, unexceptional, unimaginative, unremarkable, wonted, workaday, antiquated, banal, common, conventional, corny, old hat, pedestrian, played out, run-of-the-mill, stale, timeworn, pedestrian, prosaic

Why I Like It
I like quotidian because it sounds really exotic, even though it isn't. It's ironic, then. Kinda. I generally like words that begin with Q and end in "ian." I came across the word most recently while reading The Cryptonomicon, which you should read also.

Finally, I like quotidian because it sounds like a Roman Emperor. Behold: Emperor Quotidian, the most boring man ever to wear a toga...

www.quotidian.com
Quotidian.com's website is a personal site for Tara, Peter, and Neil. A ping tells us buggar all about the site, so we are forced to wade through the actual website like a fumbling teenaged boy negotiating a college girl's bra...

Oh dear...further reading produces some disturbing info. Neil has had some experience with premature infants, which is really sad. Best wishes to Neil!!! I hope he and his family are doing well.

Peter's original site was hacked and destroyed, but he does offer his Wife and Son's sites as an alternative.

Tara is also the mom of a preemie. G-d bless her, too. What a strange thing to discover, eh. Tara is married to Peter.

The site could use some graphics, but since it's about such a serious and important topic, I feel like a right git even mentioning that.

OK...moving swiftly along.

A Google of quotidian brings up a number of, well, boring links (one to dictionary.com, woudln't you know). Amongst the less boring is quotidian.org run by a dude who has been to Prague. I shouldn't have to tell you, then, that the website is actually a blog.

Ha ha! Pretentious Bloggers Unite!!

And that yer lot. I hope you've enjoyed this journey into language with me. I've had a lovely time.