how cover letters should all be written.

glip
blong
zort

Coping in a strange, new world,
from the International Herald Tribune:
You think, "I'm living in Paris. How can I be miserable?"
via Neille.

We had a small black and white movie festival with E. and R.-
last night watched "Double Indemnity," with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray
("I wonder if a little rum would help get this on its feet," says the hapless McMurray, over his iced tea).
Tonight, "Twentieth Century," with Carole Lombard and John Barrymore
("I close the iron door on you")-
and the worst old movie I've seen in a long time:
a little 1941 von Sternberg film called "The Shanghai Gesture," starring Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Ona Munson, and Victor Mature.
It definitely had entertainment value (Ona Munson calls someone a "disabled flamingo"), but maaaan, was it not good. Tierney is a babe (her photo on the cover was what made us rent it), but her role sucks, and her acting is awful. Still, Shanghai at that time must have been quite the interesting and skanky place- I'd like to read about it. I know people whose families lived there in the 30s, though I'm sure they didn't have much to do with casinos and opium dens. There were lots of Russians there, and they were represented in the film, too. The bartender is pretty great.
Damn, E. lent me a book about the history of Australia, and I forgot it. I'm still caught up in the end of "True History of the Kelly Gang," and want to read up on that some more, too.
I need someone to give me a big grant, just so I can stay home and read everything I want to.

Erika, sorry for the confusion.
we're going to Death Valley the first week of April.
whee-ha!

oh, yeah, here we come:


average temperature in Death Valley in April- 89.5 degrees F.

the five things below are an attempt to start thinking a bit more positively.
it's too damn easy to constantly list things that suck.

five small things that made me happy today:

1) the fog in the morning, followed by-
2) the sun and warmth this afternoon
3) being able to see sunset and the ships on the bay from my roof
4) the little vodka tonic with Meyer lemon I'm having right now
5) thinking about our upcoming week in Death Valley
-must buy a big fabulous sun hat.

ok, people.
I'm sorry, I tried to quit doing those quizzes, but I just can't help myself.
not to mention I thought this one was very clever and funny.

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Igor Stravinsky. Known as a true son of the new 20th Century, my music started out melodic and folky but slowly got more dissonant and bizzare as I aged. I am a traveler and a neat freak, and very much hated those rotten eggs thrown at me after the premiere of "The Rite of Spring." Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

thanks, eli!
xoxoxoxo

*%#!@

skiing today.
snow.
lots of snow.
white-out.
people kept saying, "this is awesome! the best it gets!"
I just kept falling.
over and over.
twisted ankle, sore knees, tired muscles.
but fun!
and I finally got over my fear (I hope) of bumpy snow.
also-
I hate people who ski.
such a bizarre hobby.
watched Olympic slalom races briefly over dinner on the way home, and two of the skiers just wiped out completely. heartbreaking. the slo-mo of the fall, the probably broken leg, the slamming into the net fence... owie.
sleep involuntary now.

ok, tried moving the blog over to my new domain and it won't let me publish.
I get an error message from my ftp logs that says something like "error 550-- that file or directory does not exist."
but IT DOES!
so I give up.

on another note:
I talked to my father very briefly and learned that my great great uncle was the mayor of Berlin at some point during the Weimar Republic.
must do a little research about this.
very strange.

---

I'm not the only one who doesn't like Valentine's day.

hey!
I got new glasses!

but I don't have a cell phone...

from Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology:
"GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Happy Valentine's Day, Gemini!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how you never
bear a grudge against the mountains that are in your way, but
rather just set to work getting around them. I adore the way you
catalyze interesting chemical reactions everywhere you go. I am
delighted by how you bravely follow the leaps of your
effervescent intelligence -- even when it means you treat life as
if it had a fast-forward button. Last but not least, Gemini, I am
quite fond of how you can yack on your cell phone and ride your
bike and snack on corn chips all at the same time."

I'm a frayed knot

A skeleton walks into a bar and says, "Give me a beer and give me a mop."

treasure

In looking for a drawing I made several years ago, I stumbled upon certain other items in a folder labeled "scrapbook."
the folder is fat- alas, the scrapbook not yet attempted.

1)  a postcard from Eli, from his trip to Italy to visit his sister, addressed to "Susanna Unsicchera."
2)  several very silly photo-booth photo strips of myself, looking younger, thinner, and pleasantly tipsy.
3)  a piece of paper it took me several minutes to identify, from the "Musee Mechanique" a few years ago-
a fortune from some machine which strains to type, on an ailing ancient typewriter disguised as something fabulous, an important message for you to ponder.

"DO NOT SCATTER  OUR FORCES, AND NEVER BEGIN THIN S  
THAT  OU HAVE NO INTENTION OF FINISHING.  THIS
HAPPENS BECAUSE  OU SOMETIMES ACT, AND THEN THINK.
MARSHAL  OUR T OUGHTS.  MAKE THEM OBE   OUR WISER
SELF RATHER T AN LETTING T EM RUL E  OU.  A REASONABLE
AMOUNT OF HEALT   INTROSPECTION W ILL DO  OU NO HARM,
AND THE RESULTS W ILL AMAZE  OU."

and
4)  a toast, told to me by some blushing and delightful customers during a busy Friday night shift as a waitress, and hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper, my other tables horribly neglected and already planning to leave small tips. screw 'em.

here's to the lady
in the little red shoes
she loves her nooky
and she loves her booze

she lost her cherry
it is no sin
she still has the box
that it came in.

noticed a guy at the cafe this morning reading this book:
"Finding Flow", by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
I was much less interested in the contents of the book than in the author's name...

another internet love story (or, the power of language):
how Dean Allen of textism.com met his partner Gail and moved to the south of France.
"Rabbit Redux":
the first article I ever read on Textism, the thing that made me want to read more.

more dreams, just as vivid, just as surreal.
this one about being pregnant and giving birth and the other details and people are getting fuzzy in memory, but oh, man, what weird stuff.
hard to shake.
interpretation? I lean toward all that talk of creativity vs. stagnation with all those cartoon artists last night.
Eli crashed on our floor after an evening of crowded comic art gallery parties (3 bucks? geez) and a late-night pitcher of Poppy Jasper- with Trevor from Minneapolis- at the ever-fabulous Zeitgeist. (here are some photos of their classy "guestrooms," Eli- next time! looks at least more comfy than my floor. don't know about the noise level, though.)
Saw a great, great, great drawing called "Let's Eat Books" at the Balazo Gallery at 24th and Mission by someone named Andrice Arp. fabulous. I'm tempted to go back to the Comic Convention just to find him/her and say how much I liked it. damn.

very vivid dreams, very surreal.
in one of them I was on my way to Paris, packing an enormous suitcase, freaking out because I was going to miss my flight and there was no time, no time. meanwhile I was packing all this stuff into the suitcase- socks, underwear, books, videos (?), bathing suit, towels, every pair of shoes and boots that I own, and more, and the car that was going to take me to the airport was going to arrive any second. this went on forever.
then I woke up. quite a disappointment. I really would love to be going to Paris right now.
I've had these "late-for-the-airport" dreams before, but usually I'm going to Germany, to visit my friend Constanze. Sometimes in my dream I actually arrive and see her, and other, more fictional people, and these are always very, very hard to wake up from. They make me very emotional.
I also have had dreams about trains and train stations for years- just often enough that I notice it, but not more than once year or so. These are fun, also very surreal (sometimes the train stations are very bizarre dream-constructions; like science fiction train stations), and frequently also involve going to visit Constanze.

---

I am having great frustrations with my new web-hosting company. I have a feeling that I just don't know what I'm doing. grrrrr. want to get it up and running.
I'm going to see Eli today at the Alternative Press Expo at Herbst Pavilion. He's only here for the weekend- what a coast-hopper, eh?

-went to the eye doctor yesterday and am getting a fabulous new pair of glasses (and sunglasses) in two weeks. this is very exciting.
-did something verrrry foolish; went out and got my own little domain name. more on that after I find someone to host it. I wanted to use cornerhost, but apparently they're having some difficulty.
anyone have any suggestions?
it's past my bedtime again.
damn.

just noticed:
under "Interface Language" in Google preferences:
"Display Google tips and messages in: Elmer Fudd"
"In owdew to shwow you the mwost rwelevwant wesults, we wave wommitted some wentiries vewy swimilar to the 22 alweady dispwayed.
If you ike, you cwan wepeat the swearch wwwith the wommitted wesults incwuded."

we went skiing yesterday!
I only learned 4 years ago, and only get to go a few times a year, so the fact that I can do it at all amazes me. If I weren't so out of shape it would be so much easier... now that I've outgrown the "bunnies" I can whiz around the blue slopes with only a modicum of nervousness.
Today, my calves are killing me.
last night I decided that a hot bath might help prevent some stiffness, so I started filling the tub when we got home.
Spike started going crazy, meowing and pacing back and forth by the tub.
now, he has shown interest in water before; he's had moments when the shower seems to fascinate him, and he's been a little weird around baths, too, but this was totally different- he was interested.

(Paula Poundstone has a great little routine about cats and water; how they stand outside her shower when she's in there, and when she emerges, they say, "Man! it was ALL OVER you, man! We tried to save you, but the doors...")

Our tub sucks. It's small; there are cumbersome, hard-to-clean glass doors instead of a curtain; and the sink is right next to it, so you can only get in on one side. Spike sat on the sink and meowed over and over, doing that cat-thing where they stretch out a paw verrr-y far, sort of testing the air and surface conditions. Because the glass door is in a little track, the edge of the tub is very impractical for delicate kitty paws. The sink end was soon abandoned.
He started poking around the other end; actually tried to perch on the corner, which resulted in his falling into the tub, which, luckily for him, only had a few inches of water in it.

At this point I started laughing hysterically. I couldn't figure out what was going on, and the sight of him standing, wide-eyed, cat-ankle deep in the bathtub, was just too much. I hauled him out of the water and he allowed me to dry off his paws, although he usually hates to be handled in such a manner; I think he was in denial about having fallen in. He still couldn't take his eyes off the tub, though...

When I put some bath stuff in the tub and climbed in, Spike was right behind me- literally, he successfully perched on the corner behind me, alternately licking my shoulder and putting his paw on it, and watching the washcloth swim around in the water. Did he think it was a fish? Was there some "my-former-life-as-a-hunter" thing going on?
His whiskers twitched. He made three separate attempts to get closer to the water. These seemed to involve a plan to actually climb down my torso; twice he gingerly put a paw just below my shoulder, both times deciding it wasn't stable enough ground. I still thought the whole thing was way too funny to chase him away. The meowing was incessant, and if ever I have really, truly thought an animal was trying to communicate something to me (besides "feed me wet food," "shiatsu now," etc.), I really believed it then.
or maybe he's getting old and crazy.

ok, ok, so obviously I'm out of the loop, and didn't do any real research on IM devices.
There is a messaging thing for macs, and they even have a new version for OS X.
groovy.

it's about time, Rosie O'Donnell.
how does she think she can avoid backlash from the gay community?
must have felt very freeing to say "I'm a lesbian" on "Will and Grace" (which I'm ashamed to say I've enjoyed watching from time to time), even if she was "playing a character."

oh, this news about Amtrack is so sad!
I mean, it's been looming for years, it's not a shock, but I just can't imagine- no trains?
this country is going to shit.

oh, and here's more proof:
Risque business:
Misguided skating officials are cracking down on pelvis-pumping and lap-dancing - as though people actually want to watch Olympians skate
by Joan Ryan (SF Chronicle)
"The crotch shot is gone.
You ought to know this before you tune into the Olympics next weekend, in case you're a figure-skating purist.
No more splayed legs around a dancing partner's neck. No more holding a partner upside down while she performs splits. No more above-the-head, hand-to- groin holds.
The judges have had enough.
At this Olympics, those crowd-pleasing poses can cost an ice-dancing or pairs team a tenth-of-a-point deduction under new rules that penalize "undignified" moves. The new rules, instituted last year by the International Skating Union, would also cover pelvis pumping, crotch-grabbing, lap-dancing and all simulated acts as well as any move requiring a stripper's pole or an exam table."
Undignified?
are they kidding?
Maybe if they just have the skaters wear big puffy snow-suits...