Don't don't don't let's start

My lack of fear and trembling of office-based authority doesn't quite get me in trouble, but I think it disconcerts some people. (In fact, the native importance of the whole 8-5 world is a concept almost entirely lost on me.)

I will be temping a slow assignment (one where you babysit a lobby and a low-traffic switchboard, as opposed to one where you file your ass off all day), my native commonsense and I websurfing and minding our own business, when, lo! Ms. Very Important Office Personage will drop by and make a request.

Trouble enters right behind Ms. My Office Has Two Windows, as my HeirarchicalSpideySense fails to go off. I don't realize that this is not a request, but a Royal Request, neither of which are actually requests at all.

Instead of the expected "M'am yes ma'am how high ma'am?" I respond with an assessment of when it will get done, based on whatever I've been given to understand of the frontdesk's usual operation.

If they asked me then to do it right away? I would, with no further discussion. But they usually don't. They usually seem at a loss for what to say, as if I had been unspeakably rude.

Then they go away. And I resume surfing the web.

"So, we are dumb and we are not so dumb." ~ Bill Cosby

Blackbird has spoken

Though cold and much too early,
The world had gone all blue and pink,
Which is ok when the sun does it

Hey there Mr. Shintoist!

Holiday Shout Out To: Molly, who's Czech Easter Pork Roast recipe got me out of my no-turkey/no-ham holiday cooking bind. It was delicious, Molly; thanks!

Best Present, Given: This is a tie between the Zombies!!! game and bag of 100 glowinthedark Zombies!!! we sent to my soon-to-be-brother-in-law, and the Trogdor! The Burninator! t-shirt I sent to Agent Smith. Obviously, things with exclamation marks make great gifts.

Best Present, Received: Without question, the gift card for an afternoon of pampering at our local spa from Mein Schlankmann. Hmmm, last year he gave me a fabu tub spa thingie; I wonder if he's trying to tell me something?

Favourite Christmas Special, Ever: Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas. If you haven't seen this, I will rush over with my copy right now. If you don't have a dvd player, I will buy one on the way. The bestest take on Gift of the Magi. Ever.

Favourite Christmas Special, Caught Randomly on TV: It's a Wonderful Life. Yes, I still love this, and miss the days when, if you had cable, you could see it round the clock anytime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sigh.

Most Upsetting Christmas Special, Caught Randomly on TV: The new Muppet one from last year. Ugh. You know what someone can get me for Christmas next year? The Clockwork Orange LaZBoy viewing chair and a wizard ninja team to kidnap Brian Henson. He will watch my Muppet collection until his eyes bleed or he gets some hint of his father's sensibility.

Bets will be taken on which happens first.

Then we will drink mulled wine out of his skull and feed his carrot to the bunnies. And god bless us, every one.

But the fighter still remains, hmm, hmm, hmmm

Hey there: Happy Boxing Day one and all!

Odd that I seem to have just skippy-go-lightlied over the more obtrusive holiday. Twasn't a statement or anything, I just had things to do and stuff.

But today, when all good little anglophiles should be snug at home, perhaps playing with their brand new copies of SoulCalibur2 (oh yeah!), I am at the temping (boo and hiss).

Not much to say about it, really. I don't mind it (except for sorting mail. i really, really hate doing that, and have since my college desk attendant days. no idea why. unless it was seeing The Postman. shudder.), but it tends to be pretty slow around holidays, save for the 9 minutes when everything that is going to occurs.

Today that was 9:38-9:47am.

It is now 1:51pm.

Ticktockticktockticktock.

news!

My younger sister just got engaged! To a pretty darn cool guy! Huzzah!

The wedding is scheduled for Summer 2005. And the wedding plansanity staaaartsss...now.

after the swimsuit and eveningwear rounds. . .

I've narrowed the field of possible computer names down to these 3:

~ Father Williams (because it isn't old anymore)
~ Jones (so it can warn me if aliens are approaching)
or
~ Delgamor, The Computerator

Wow, you might say, that must be some great computer you have there if you're so keen to give it a cool name. Yeah, well, I haven't set it up yet, ok? Are you happy now?

Really, I've been sick all weekend, and thus without energy to do all the moving and lifting and stuff shifting that would involve getting my sleek dell settled in its new little computery home.

And don't even get me started on the file transfering. Makes me sleepy just to think about it....zzzzzzzzz.

we put the ice in customer service (a true story)

At the Giant Office Supply MegaStore of My Choice (but only because it's 7 blocks from home), I had acquired my giant desk pad calendar and was in search of some colourful markers for it. Meanwhile Bob was mourning the disappearance of his favourite type of pen.

(a sales associate approached. she was amazonian in scope.)

SalesAmazon: Are you finding everything alright?

Me: Yep. (waved calendar menacingly)

Bob: Well, actually, I'm deeply disappointed that the type of pen I like seems to have been discontinued.

SA: Oh, well, hahahahahahahahahaha. (laughed)

On the 17th Day of Consumas...

I have a new computer. It is at home, seductively splayed about the living room where I slowly stripteased it bit by bit from its packaging last night while watching Celebrity Poker Showdown (Hank Azara and Mo Gaffney were on hand, but the table was rounded out with B-listers), despite having no intention of actually setting it up until tonight. Maybe.

I would have reanimated it right away, but was a bit tired after wrastlin' the holiday tree into place (the UPS man knocked after I had manuvered the Rae-sized piney beast into the tree stand on top of the end table, but before I had tightened the screws. tim. ber.). Also, there was/is crocheting to be done.

In the meantime, the new computer needs a name. Hmmm.....

I call it The Velvet Dustmop

I woke up this morning with rock star hair. This was unexpected.

Granted there are several varieties of Bed Hed to which I am used, especially when I've had a bubble bath at 1:37 am and am going to sleep with wet hair, but most of them don't look good.

However, today my hair apparently had decided to become a glam rocker. And brushing didn't seem to phase it. It was unflappably hip, in a british Queer Eye for the Straight Guy sort of way.

What else could I do? I put on sunglasses, some glitter, and my post-apocalypse Scottish Play boots and blue faux snakeskin trench coat and went to fake carpal tunnel for the med students.

in other hair news. . . I'm going to rebecome a brunette, slowly, so as not to scare anyone. It's for a show, but also because I'm a bit curious to discover what my real hair colour actually is now, whether I have any grey, etc, etc.

Why am I blogging aout my freakin' hair anyway? Because I cannae blog about basketball anymore; my blog is an official jinx.

Take the ball and follow down the court, then you'll be on the top upon the top

I was going to muse a bit on Christmas and what I like about it,

but got distracted because HOLY SHIT my basketball team is in freakin' 4th place according to ESPN.

How the hell did that happen?

Moreover, they will be playing here, that is IN SEATTLE, in less than 2 days.

Are there still tickets? If so, they will be mine.

While a basically theatrrr artsy sports disdaining person, there are exactly 2 teams to which I pay attention. One of them is on winter break. The other will be here Saturday.

You really haven't seen how loud and obnoxious I can be until you accompany me to NCAA basketball. Poor Bob may emerge shellshocked.

I was going to blog from work here but my break is almost over and I need a cookie, so

Mayor McCool of Christmasville

I proclaim it to now be the time for the playing of the holiday music. Bring me the Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Brown cds, so we may play forth the coolest Christmas music in all the land!

these are problems you wanna have

she thought as she asked, shall we play magic or shall i start baking the chocolate cake?

it is bob's birthday. be happy and rejoice, all ye peoples.

or don't. totally up to you.

the weakest thing i've ever done is to stay right by your side

"I feel dead inside," he said, and she waited for the punchline.

None came, and she wanted to tell him that this statement had become old and tired. She longed to point out he had been dead inside for quite some time, as far as she could tell. She wondered why he had suddenly gotten around to being bothered by it just now.

But she thought it might be insensitive to mention any of this.

Look, Ma! I'm temping!

Which gives me faaaaaar too much quality time with ye olde computer, frankly.

Normally I would still be asleep right now. Hmph.

So, what's on my mind?

~ Went to My Very First Meet-up for Dean last night. It was inspiring and tiresome, all at the same time.

~ Deciding it is time to get some semblence of my normal social life back, I'm gunning for an easier to accomplish hairstyle for the late-night show I'm in so I can see some normal hour theatrrr.

~ Being poor for Christmas has me falling back on homemade gifts. My sister will particularly be on the receiving end of my crocheting onslaught (now with 50% more tassels!).

whiskey drink in hand
backs itch for something absent
martini maybe

my own personal jesus plays to the leopards in my head

trying to get some computer work done and listening to my current iTunes mp3 mix which I really need to burn off to cd so i can listen to it endlessly in my car instead of here, in the other ear we have an endless round of the building's fire alarm being tested, and tested, and tested.
to me it sounds like the bell that actually rings in the fire house, but that may just be a false impression from the movies
"ok, guess what I am," says the movie "BRRRRINGGG!"
it feels wrong to be sitting here ignoring it after 2 and a half years spent sporadically shepherding dorm residents outside during the biannual testing of the fire alarms
in my building the CAs (community advisors) played a game with the whole thing
one of us would pull one of the 12 alarm stations and the others would have to go read the alarm system command central control board in the RHCs office to figure out which station we needed to reset
and yes, we did do silly pointless pseudo SWAT maneuvers and say "Go, go!" and such quite a bit more than was strictly necessary
my last semester as a CA, as the senior member of the team, I got to be the one to pull the alarm
and if you think that didn't make me feel like a rock star, you don't know me very well.

Reading: Baudalino by Umberto Eco (and if any word used just now turns out to have been spelled correctly, i will be the most shocked one of all)

I'd say you were lucky 'cause I know what you've done

I have a problem with grudges. Or, actually, I won't go that far. Some people, my mom and sister being among those some, would say I have a problem, which is really theirs, that problem being that I hold them, the grudges.

"But what else are grudges for?" I wonder. I never get a good answer to that.

hairbrush
there are dents
in the wall
over
my desk
where I've thrown you
over again
modern scourge
accessory as
hat
or gloves
or cat o nine tails
everyday
in the mirror
striking
are you perfect, yet
down
no, you're not
swish
are you perfect yet
thud
no you're not
the biting reply
draws blood
or not
as the transgression
demands

Listening to (in my head): Evita and Barenaked Ladies
because
it is PBS pledge time
and
less than 24 hours til the concert
woo and hoo

You've spent two hours carousing with people who are pleasant enough but who, face it, if you weren't in a show with them right now you wouldn't cross the street to save them from a mugger or say hi
and meanwhile
somewhere between 1500 and 2000 thousand miles away
he's had an opening and you aren't seeing it
and you've had an opening and he isn't here
and who knows when either of you will be
and, driving home, you feel every inch of that distance as if you've walked it twice and would again just to be there.

Look, Ma! I'm in a show!

The Twilight Zone, LIVE! late night at Theatre Schmeater, to be specific.

Perhaps, if you are in Seattle, you might consider coming to see it, perhaps.

Desire coupled
With lack of sufficient nerve
Breed uneasy scams

i've said it before

Dreaming about people you know is just weird.

Especially when they are not wearing pants.

Jim: "Hey Steve, you look awful!"
Steve: "Oh, hey Jim. It's my sketch comedy. It keeps falling flat."
Jim: "Sounds like you need the 14th Stair."
Steve: "The 14th Stair? What's that?"
Jim: "After 22 years of work in Spolinology, scientists have come up with the perfect blend of lame swear words, random absurd situational juxtapositions, and gross fake genitalia. The 14th Stair is guaranteed to make at least 2 people in your audience howl with laughter."
Steve: "Where can I get this 14th Stair?"
Jim: "Here, you can borrow mine."
Steve: "But Jim, your sketch comedy never falls flat."
Jim: "Exactly Steve, exactly."
(cheery music plays) The 14th Stair, the fourteenth stair, the 14th stair, the 14th stair
(voice over) The 14th Stair, endings to sketches not included, by Saturday Night Industries. A division of Zurdicon.

Brains overrule us
Tabling our waking fears
Even if so moved

Priorities Got Filed Where?

The AOL "news"box when you sign in is often amusing/annoying (amnoying? anusing?)

Anyway.

Today:
WalMart Image Stripped Down
Playboy Photos, Illegal Workers
Wholesome Reputation Sullied?

Hmm, take the fact that they fire any worker who suggests that maybe, perhaps Wal-Mart employees ought to have a union (which was illegal last time I checked, besides being "majorly heinous") and I think you can remove the question mark from that last subhead there.

Coo koo kachoo

This weekend I attempted, once again, to watch The Graduate. Granted that I've not seen the whole movie and what I have seen has been in out of order fragments, but still, I'm not so much enjoying it as, well, not.

In my defense (re: being accused of excessive negativity or having no taste), here are at least 10 movies which I really, really like:

The Shawshank Redemption - A pretty typical choice, unfortunately. Despite this fact, I can watch it over and over and over and feel really good about life.
The Manchurian Candidate - It sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel, but is actually a brilliant movie. Just, wow. The Garden Party scene. Yeah. Wow.
Double Indemnity - If you were in a noir film and had to watch some film-noir, this is the movie you would be seeing; it is snappy and evil. "Flip the record over, let's hear the other side." How true.
Singin' In the Rain - Despite my enjoyment of Chicago, this remains my favourite movie musical. I especially love, well, all of it, but I double love the Cyd Charisse/Gene Kelly dance (NOT the one in the scarf, the other one).
The Usual Suspects - My friend Adam and his friend Mike kidnapped me to watch this one and were quiet throughout despite the fact they had already seen it. **See also The Way of The Gun for stunning working-a-room-with-weapons grace between Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe.
American Beauty - Best first date movie ever. Both the date and the movie.
Strictly Ballroom - My favourite of the 3 films by my favourite director. The style serves the story more here, I think, than it does in Moulin Rouge.
Persuasion - My Jane Austin-based movie collection is extensive, and I do have a shameful fondness for Clueless, but this one actually has real-looking people in it. Also, it's a lovely story. Also, Fiona Shaw.
Brazil - My first run-in with Terry Gilliam was The Fisher King where I rewound and rewatched the Grand Central Station dancing scene numerous times. Brazil, however, is a more complete trip into his head. I think.
The Great Muppet Caper - Charles Grodin was willing to take an acting note from a Muppet. But, then again, who isn't?

Must. Act. Better.

reading: Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver

I'm runaway train into the night involved in a show. It goes up in 8 days. And I've completely lost my acting mojo, if we take "mojo" to mean "confidence", which it probably doesn't but what the hell.

Mostly I'm intimidated by the rest of the cast. Not that they aren't nice, just. . .It's been a long time since I've been involved in a show (not counting Ghosty, here) where I've had this much respect for the director and other actors. I'm not sure why it's freaking me out so much, but it really, really is. Ack.

I think the last time I was this intimidated was when I started work on What the Butler Saw. . . .and that's a great point to remember, because I really rather sucked in that show. Oh, no, wait, I was consistent. Fuck.

Ok, need to do a systematic-like search for my acting confidence. Where did I last see it? Retrace steps. Try not to panic.

My Weekend
or
You Are Entering The Discomfort Zone
or
No Sleeping Near the Baklava
or
The Leg Kick Always Works
or
Stealing the Producer's Coffee Is A Great Way to Get Cast
or
My Still Not Getting The Graduate
or
Pumpkin Beer, Sex Toys, and Diet Tips
or
Dennys Vu
or
And Lo! On the 7th Day Thou Shalt Look Like Ass
or
My Ignoring the Gerund (Pretend version)

And that pretty much sums it up.

and still listening to Jet
Dear Psycho Frat Boy,

Remember the sort of dancing that embarrassed you when I made the mistake of going to the Theatrrr Dept. End of Year Awards After Party "with" you?

Yeah, well, fuck you, 'cause they're using it to sell iPods now.

"Oh well, what the hell," sang McWatt

Despite some occasional pleasant overlapping we almost all move about in distinctly separate worlds.

I say this not because it is a new insight but because at some times it is more disconcertingly obvious than at others. Like now, for instance.

And back to bed for I am sick-like.

Flashback: Day of Thor

With divine snack of strawberry PopRocks in hand, on a gorgeous day of errand running and unexpected respite from responsibility, I felt sure the Miscellaneous Birds waving their gray, white, and gray again way to and fro above Market Street knew that, from where I sat, they were Esther Williamsing to Kenny Loggins' Danger Zone, so I barely minded the English Racing Green minivan that almost sideswiped me.

Time for Evil

What is it about midnight?

I've been tired and feeling almost but not quite sick most of the day. It was a good day, despite this, with one notable not-good exception that if I were smart I wouldn't even toss into the mix for consideration but if I had the proverbial dollar for every statement I could accurately start with "If I were smart I wouldn't. . ." I would be able to buy that steel blue Z3 I so long for.

And I got a lot done. But when I was done getting things done I was done with the day and the outside world. I got a frozen dinner and popped Pride & Prejudice into the DVD machine and veggied out.

So why am I awake now and wanting to write things? I'm not wanting to write things, I'm wanting to sleep.

Stupid body, be more sleepy. Ignore the call of the pumpkins.

(listening to Limp Bizkit doesn't help, either, in case you'd wondered)

Thought you'd entered where
I waited with mocha for
Someone, but no, sigh

in lighter thought I have magic soup. Flavor: red miso

The Earth, which is round, goes around the sun. Grown-ups, who are not all-knowing in any case, also do not actually have eyes in the back of their heads. Shaving your upper legs does not cause the hair to grow back in upside-down. Showering right after sex is not effective birth control.

Oh, and saying that you want people with confederate flags to vote for you doesn't mean you are a bigot.

Does it perhaps mean you haven't given thought to the many people who are offended by the confederate flag? Possibly. But what, I wonder typographically, has put the idea into our fuzzy heads that we have the right never to be exposed to anything we find offensive?

Take recent events at UW. The actions taken and not taken by the powers that be would seem to suggest they actually feel some things to be so offensive that the offended can not help but react violently, so shame on you for offending them so much because you really should have known better.

My countrypeople continually astound me with new and convoluted ways to avoid personal responsibility.

Achtung! I now own a gravy boat.

It even matches the other dishes. In some people's reckoning, this might mean I am now a grown-up. Perhaps I will start telling people to clean their rooms.

Hmmmm, I'd do best to start with myself there. Messy, messy, messy.

You must be double jointed. And Hungarian.

Rudolph Valentino. Brooding, handsome, and secretly Dr. Who.

How did I figure it out? Well, besides having an incredibly annoying sidekick who can't act, his tent is 5 times bigger inside than out.

Dead giveaway, that.

more wisdom from the phone

today in various and sundry cell conversations i found out

1) women have all the power
and
2) terrorists hate us because we have more money.

Golly, it sure is a relief to discover the world is a much simpler place than i had thought.

from the phone:

"Eddie Murphy sure has jumped on the Disney ride-as-movie train."

"I can't wait 'til they make Space Mountain the movie."

"Yeah me too, wait, they've already done that."

"No, I think you're thinking of Ghost Mountain."

"Actually, we're both thinking of Witch Mountain."

"Damn, and that was almost funny, too."

i'm not the cool kid, but i brought the cool kid
or
there are no razor blades god dammit

I love Halloween. I haven't been on about that yet, so I'm going to make it perfectly clear: Samhain, All Hallow's Eve, Pagany New Year, call it what you will, but it's my favourite holiday.

Why? Well, there's the very obvious lots and lots of free candy, but that's probably cutting it too flip. I think I like it because it is frivolous and comes sans baggage.

When I reached that middle childhood between elementary school and, well, now, Halloween meant a night of total freedom. Roaming the streets at will, scaring little children, filling my pillowcase, wearing silly clothes, cutting through yards and the huge piles of leaves left there.

Nothing you do for Oct 31st is filled with any monumental importance. The candy will get eaten. The pumpkins will rot, and we're all ok with that. The costumes just need to make it through the trick-and-treating and/or the fetish party, and if pieces come off on the journey that adds to the fun. Even my family unit, dysfunctional as it was, managed to not attach any heavy stressing weirdness to the day.

This leaves me with a holiday i can thouroughly enjoy. A rarity to be sure.

early late night at Denny's, re: the poseidon adventure

"Well of course the boat got knocked over, Frank Drebben was driving it!"

listening to: Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet, sent courtesy of Agent Smith
(he also makes fabulous cookies. NOT that he ever sends me any. HINT, HINT, SLEDGEHAMMER)

As witnessed by the guy shopping waffle cones

"Aaaauuuuuugggghhhhhhhhh!!!!"

The little blond girl was there in the frozen food aisle, all right, jigging like a troll. An angry, angry troll.

The tall man by her side made some inquiring noises. "Look. . .What the?! Where? BROWNIE!" she managed to inarticulate.

Wait! Maybe she had the wrong brand. She always gets Swanson's and Banquet confused anyway, always starts looking for the wrong one, until set back on the right path by finding the brownie. Maybe. . .

No. No, there were no brownies to be found. There was more jigging.

"Obviously they've joined the healthy eating kick," from the tall, non-jigging one.

"That's insane!"

He warmed to the convincing. "No, see, none of them have the desserts anymore. So it's an advertising ploy."

"I didn't say it was impossible, just insane," she might have been frothing, but the creamy-tiled floor made it hard to tell for sure. "If you want healthy, you don't eat Swanson's. It's crap food, with a dessert that cooks with your meal, and occasionally has bits of the vegetable in it so it's still warm when you get done with your chicken and that's the whole point!"

"We could just buy a brownie and warm it up in the microwave."

"Oh, that's not the point." She stilled her angry dance and soberly considered the misty food case. "Fuck them. Let's go buy a steak."

hear my words they’re the ones you would think I would say

hints drip like water
building tortured nothing shapes
dropped too small to be

brilliant or insane money making idea number three hundred and seventy two:

Strip Club Karaoke

(Either the person gets up to sing with two flanking strippers, or stripping flankers, dancing about to whatever they choose to sing. . .even if it's Ghost Riders In the Sky. . .or the lyrics are projected onto an already-stripped dancer.)

favourite new word found in today's internet surfing:
dumsquizzled

Jesus Retreats (film at eleven)

I spent the weekend On Retreat W/Annex, (could be a really fun cable access show) which inevitably reminded me of retreat experiences past, all involving some sort of Jesus action.

I take a time-out to explain something to my Midwest readers: A retreat involves going far away into the woods for a couple to several days, eating junk, drinking a lot, and lighting things on fire. It may help you place it if you think of it as a "camping trip." Or a "high school debate tournament."

(I was surprised when I had to explain all this to my Mom, given that I went on eleventytwelve retreats back in high school when I lived with her, but, yeah, well.)

I take a time-out to explain something to my Northwest readers: Generally speaking, people in the Midwest don't do the retreat thing. Or, rather, they do it, but that's not what they call it. Less generally speaking, there are some church groups who do. (And now that I'm no longer of their ranks, I must admit the idea of Christians on retreat amuses me. Especially Fred Phelps.)

I take a time out to explain something to everyone: Yes, I used to be a Christian. There was a Presbyterian Church right behind my house where my best friend's father was the pastor, and between those 2 factors I didn't have a fighting chance. Also, they had a children's chior. So.

The explaining continues: My religious practicing came to an abrupt halt in 11th grade when 1) the pastor started pushing me towards confirmation classes and 2) Debate Team made Sunday the only possible day of late sleeping. So, on the seventh day I rested.

fun game for the car ride down to retreat

Linden LaRouche's Six Degrees of Hitler Game

If the heart is squeezed,
the brain observes maintenance
while the stomach dreams

Trying a different tack
or
I'm grateful for the moon, I'm grateful for the rain, I'm grateful for...

~ Spaghettios w/ "meat"balls, chocolate frosting, and grocery stores which have sushi to go.

~ Snob music, specifically Gilbert and Sullivan. Let's face it, G&S are not the most pedestrian of composer/lyricist teams. You don't find a lot of G&S fans watching, say, jello wrestling, for instance. Which begs the question: How smart are they really?

~ intermittent employment. Money for acting sick is good, as was having occasion to note tonight's date, because I then remembered it was time for...

~THE NEW BARENAKED LADIES CD! This also means I am grateful for my credit card. Fiddle dee dee.

~ The Topsy Turvy Soundtrack, which gives me a schmoopie excuse to be grateful for Bob, who first introduced me to this movie. This after he caught me singing "Poor Wand'ring One" in a theatrrr stairwell.

~ My friend Brian. Even though he is traveling in exotic lands, he has remembered those of us who are state bound and torments us with pictures. Oh delicious torment!

Reading: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken

Normal Life ala Mode

Calling all
Soccer Moms presumptive
I know a gentleman
Who'll take you
Sight unseen
As long as you're pretty
And quiet
And clean
He'll wed you
And bed you
Once per fiscal quarter
Whether you need it or not
Well,
Not really
But he'll at least think about it
Perhaps

So. A thing happened last night which I'm at a loss to name. I can't call it a shock or jolt or anything which denotes surprise. I can't say I was disappointed, because it was really just what I expected to happen. I guess you could say that the other shoe finally dropped.

And it truthfully was somewhat of a relief. Artaud had a stage direction in Jet of Blood, where he said something fell with "nausea-inducing slowness." Yeah, that pretty much covers it. This inevitable bad thing that's been just about to happen for 2 years now, pretty likely to happen for 1 year, and nigh upon us for the past 2 months has finally arrived.

I got off the phone call that informed me and felt. . .not too bad, really. I wasn't crying, I wasn't throwing things. I also wasn't happy, but that wasn't to be looked for. My appetite remained, which was a pleasant surprise since extreme emotional angst goes straight to my tummy, does not pass go, does not collect 200 dollars. Nope, my clearest feeling was a sort of low-grade irritation.

I ate a waffle and some bacon. I watched Monster House, which never fails to amuse me. I went to bed to read Catch-22 (one of my all time favs) and actually felt sleepy. Lights out by midnight, tra la.

And then, boom, wide awake at 2am. No more sleep for me. Obviously I'm repressing something. This'll be fun.

Mister Late-comer
Sorry, I meant General
You ain't got no game

Just because I'm easily amused doesn't mean it's not funny
or
Monthly Visitation

I forget just where I first encountered the quaint old theory that women's hysterics were caused by the uterus, which apparently theoretically floated free range style in the body, rising into the throat.

And I'm not really sure why we started discussing how women used to, but no longer, faint at concerts of sexy pop stars at 2 am during commercial breaks of Stylock 17 (which, by the by, lends me my favourite one-line movie spoiler of all time: "Yeah, and Dunbar's in the water tower"). (This spoiling actually happened to a friend of mine...and not initiated by me.)

But I still contend that, all feasibility set aside, since the little monthly intrusions as are seem to cause so much distress to so many women, if my uterus cut loose and wandered about, I'd be up for some discomfort and screaming too.

Reading: Sarah by Orson Scott Card and The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night!

Two completely seperate groups of people, engaged in the pursuits of different walks of life, and yet the conversation was oddly similar, rotating around the SciFi axis.

The only notable difference was that I didn't scare anyone the second time by implying someone might be making a movie out of the Foundation Series. So, I have a really good learning curve, even if the Cosmic Conversational Subconcious doesn't.

Dear ResidentLife editors,

Just a thought:
If we're watching the show in the first place,
And we've hung in through the cataract surgery,
And the baby with diabetes,
And the auto trauma,
And the kid with a BB in his eyeball,
Not to mention the 5 heart transplants,
I think we can handle seeing a nipple
Without getting too worked up.

define the things that make you want to lose your mind you try but in mundane conversation between berried vodka beverages they slip away and it isn't until solitude descends again that you realize why you turned off your phone and had to get out of the house in the first place

and all slept for a hundred years. . .

Finally, after many days of reasonless sub-concious sleep deprivation, finally I have been allowed to sleep more than three hours.

Perhaps today I will be a bit less insane.

Or more. You can never really tell.

She drops the bread crumbs
In the snowy jungle seen
Stones might be wiser

I have a new PEZ dispenser. It is Miss Piggy. When I went to add her to my collection (60 and still going strong) I found, to my chagrin, that I don't have a Fozzie.

This was chagrining because i had been presented with the option of also picking him up and had expressed certainty that i already had one. Just goes to show what my certainty is worth, I spose. . .though I think my actual term was "pretty sure."

On the up-side, being Fozzie-less gives me a brilliant excuse to go back to Archie McPhee's.

Now if only PEZ would come out with Rowlf, Swedish Chef and Bunsen&Beaker, life would be perfect.

soooo, what's on my mind tonight?

Reading: Briar Rose by Jane Yolan

~ There is a yummy sashimi dinner sitting in my very happy tummy. I don't have anything against sushi, just wasn't sure whether the place in question had arbitrary wasabi. I may be hot like wasabi when I bust rhymes, but my tongue wants none of the Green Paste of Death.

~ There was a lovely Howard Dean segment on The Daily Show tonight. A man who is capable of being silly while campaigning can be my president any day. How about tomorrow?

~ Moreover, it appears I missed some fireworks in today's so-called debate. Man. Now I have to go to CNN.com and see if they have it available for download. (see earlier installments re: that's the kind of geek I am, yes)

~ My cat is acting stranger than usual right now. Maybe it's because I gave him tuna. Or because it is Thursday.

~ I've had a lot of thought today of a doctor finishing her internship somewhere on the east coast. We were friends in college and are living each other's perpendicular lives. I wonder if she's happier?

Now with spell checking, er, spelling check

Reading: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Right now I am a very sleepy girl because I wasn't so sleepy last night. Thus I did not go to beddybye until 4am, which theoretically gave me 3 hours of sleep.

Note: theoretical sleep hours do not necessarily represent actual sleep hours.

So I go to bed and my mind is still racing, which keeps me up for another length of time I find indeterminate given my terrible sense of linear time and horrendous near-sightedness.

Bugging me: that i can't seem to learn how to spell "necessarily" and can't type a capital "i" on this fucking macintosh keyboard.

Top on my mind is a thing. It is pretty dumb and will either go away or something else will happen and right now I'm swinging back and forth on the Which is More Likely Pendulum. And, of course, the Should I Do Something About It Swing. I am a pendulum. (high school physics joke; nevermind)

Specificity level: absolute zero

The other major thing on my mind is the general lack of rootedness I am feeling. Still. It is very wearing and wearying and I'm not sure what to do about it. But I think much of my angst can be traced to it. Including the angst about the thing.

Interesting fact: the blogger spellcheck does not recognize "fucking" as a word

Life, my favourite
Chinese food, the taste is both
Sour and sweet here

after Amelie

Why is it that in the movies freaky stalker people
1) Are always unbelievably cute
2) Wind up with happy loveness instead of restraining orders
?

Reading Bazooka
Fortunes mean something, but what
Reason is reduced

best thing i've heard on late-night tv. ever:

Change can really disrupt the status quo.

hmm...

It wasn't you who
IMed me at 7:10
Strange, but sadly not

i'm tired and naked

i've had the same song stuck in my head for over 12 hours now. fortunately, it's a good song. unfortunately, the line that pops into my head most frequently is one to be very weird for singing in public places.

(. . .scream real loud, ok!)

You remember the Secret Word from Pee Wee's Playhouse?

Yeah, well I live in fear of the secret word. Or rather, of the secret sentences, or subjects, that are best not broached with random not-very-close acquaintances.

These are the things that you can innocently bring up, only to have a big giant hairy pissy deal descend upon your head like a tar-filled balloon.

And though I know, intellectually, that there is no reasonable way in hell I can be expected to know to avoid saying these things. . .though it may have even been right and good of me to mention said thing. . .the emotional aftermath of the confrontation inevitably leads to my considering the path of the recluse.

This also has a lot to do with why I tend not to be friends with people who have bursts of spontaneous unprovoked screaming at me.

Begone bellowy babe! I poke you, I poke you, I poke you!

what bothers me most about the fact that I've not been keeping my blog up to date:

that anyone out there might think i'm still reading any of those books listed. 2 are long finished. the other, well, i've hidden and am avoiding it. it was too scary.

Wouldn't society be better off if instead of a cop posted outside the bar door to check IDs and make sure people are allowed to drink, there sat a psychiatrist to determine whether one really ought to be drinking?

. . .because that's EXACTLY the kind of dork I am

I taped this, no, yesterday evening's Democratic Candidate Warren Comission-style Debate/Evening Wear Competition.

Mind you, I was home while it was on, I was just taping it for Bob and figured I might as well watch it fresh with him.

To distract myself from watching it anyway, i went in the other room and played Civ3 for 3 hours.

During the watching of the taped live replay, I kept up running commentary/play-by-play of the proceedings. This involved adding subtext for the candidates, yelling "shut up, shut up, shut up" whenever anyone exceeded their time limit by more than 5 words, and making up a not very nice song about the evil female moderator.

I think this qualifies me to be the colour man.

So, we had Ass Rehearsal last night.

Um, I mean Dress Rehearsal. Yeah.

That pretty much sums it up.

(I will be happier when the production starts. The cast is cool and the show will be best tended in our hands at this point I think.)

So, if i dream of sleeping in the little time i have for sleeping, does that count as double sleep time?

The-uh bravest thing I ever done is to run away and hide

Yeah, so I'm apparently in another "not leaving the house" phase. This one will be blessedly brief, thanks to the intervention of rehearsal.

All hail rehearsal!

If I make it to the QFC without freakin', perhaps there will be a doughnut in it for me.

In related wondering: I'm trying to decide whether or not to tell anyone about the show I'm in. Not telling people is a darn effective way to avoid their attending.

(How's that working out for you? Pretty well, thanks. Oh, keep it up then.)

What's the first rule of the musical? We do not TALK about the musical.

In unrelated consumer greed: The new BNL cd is coming out soooooooooooon. It has a song about chimpanzee postcards.

It will be mine. Oh yes.

there will be no white flag above my door

On my favourite stretch of rehearsement-to-home drive (which must be pretty darn great, since i hate the driving), I got passed in a 2 lanes become one situation. By a subaru.

It wasn't a problem or anything, I don't usually mind being passed. Except that she did one of those En Passant With Attitude, cutting me off, as if she'd been stuck behind me at 10 mph for 20 minutes. (For the record: 40 mph, which i believe is speeding in that zone, and 5 seconds).

Oh yeah, and then there was the fact that she was in a Subaru. Pardon, I mean, The Fastest SubarU in All the Land. See, i'm not a granny driver, myself, but I also don't attempt race-track caliber driving. Because I drive a Saturn, and it would just look stupid.

And after all of that effort on her part, the Subaru bastard offspring of a family fun wagon and a hatchback was a whole no cars in front of me at the next light. She probably wondered why I was laughing at her.

So I'm temping. I've been here for over 7 hours today. I also temped here for a day about a week ago.

And I've just found out what the absent receptionist's Most Important Duty is: Keeping the mint bowl filled.

It is 45 minutes 'til close on a Friday before a holiday weekend. Someone passing by the desk to grab a mint, noted that the mint bowl was empty. Now, a lesser person might have decided this wasn't that big of a deal. Not this valiant lady, oh no. She stopped, got my attention, and insisted that I dig through all of the drawers to find where the mints are kept.

Then she thanked me, and meant it. What the? Are they all drinking in their offices here?

Drinking the whole beer before eating any pizza is a good idea.

Thanks to my focus-span being very short lived these days, you've thus far been spared a rant against the 9/11 armchair terrorist expert angst. Let's all hope it lasts.

Ooh, look, shiny!

Tonight at rehearsal, after being treated to an overlong explanation of why someone wasn't late (ie, because they were, or rather weren't, getting food), I refrained from asking the obvious "So, why are you late, then?"

I also avoided the even more tempting "Oh? Why were you over half an hour late this time?" Ditto for "Not to worry, we're getting used to it."

I'm still trying to decide whether I'm proud of or disappointed in my self-control.

wow, my computer must be tired too

there's a friend's (or perhaps acquaintance, i'm not quite sure) blog which i read every other day or so.

usually, when my old computer tries to load it, a grey pop up screen informs me there is an error reading the script. when i click it, it goes away.

when the computer's innards are sufficiently junked with my day's websurfing, this happens many times.

just now, it didn't happen at all. do i miss it?

Forgiveness

After lots and lots and lots o' griping, to the tune of "Freakin' Now and Again is out in a DVD box set, what about The West Wing?, dammit!, stupid Bravo," my heart is filled with happy forgiveness.

I am replete with cooing forgiving vibes because Bravo is showing The West Wing three times a day, four days a week, and replays all 4 episodes on Sunday afternoon.

Urge to kill fading...

Also, the box set is finally being released here in time for the Misc. Holiday Glut Fest of Your Choice.

....faaaaaaaaaadiiiingggggggg.

Well, this has been a mixed day.

I found out an old college hang-out of mine just burned down.

Then I found out that one of my good college friends is getting married.

and it's not so bad, not so baaaaad

Yesterday, i got one of those lovely moments of undeserved relief which come into the life of every hard-core procrastinator.

I was in a car accident about a year ago...well, several, really, but the one to which I'm referring happened during a tech week, and actually involved my going to the emergency room with a touch of the whiplash.

Anyhoo, the car repairs and reimbursment and all that got handled pretty quickly, but it was many moons later that I received a hospital bill. Which was a surprise, since my health insurance was supposed to cover it, or so I thought.

Anticipating hassling from either of the insurance companies involved, I did what any mature, responsible procrastinator would do: I ignored it. I moved halfway across the country. I ignored it some more.

Finally, having reached Event Avoidance Horizon I made calls, expecting Mom-like lecturing or outright refusals of service. Instead I got, "Sure. Fine. No problem." and was off the phone in time to catch The West Wing.

It's like a snow day when you haven't studied for the econ final. Aaaahhhhhhh.

solo soap bubble
at crowded intersection
lonely, so you popped

Rosie the Redundanter
(i was going to whine about how boring and stupid my current temp job is, but instead i wrote this poem)

I know she's not my Doppelganger
Sitting there in front of me
No evil twin or dead ringer
Just the Soul of Redundancy
She steals tasks what are mine to do
"I'll do my job, and her work too!"

I feel I'm being punished here
For overuse of catchphrase pert
I curse the times I've uttered clear
"To be redundant couldn't hurt!"
Communiques are what I meant
I was unclear, now I repent

The cosmos heard my hubric claim
And laid a karmic smackdown on
So I sit bored and ask in shame
"For this I Rose at crack of dawn?"
And so the bloom is off the flower
"Earning" my 13 per hour

how stupid can YOU be, boys and girls?

Once upon a time, about 3 hours ago, a stupid actress left her rehearsal and got into her stupid car named Nemesis.
She journeyed stupidly far, all the way from the Village of University to the Fjords of Ballard.
Quite abruptly, she realized her stupid stomach was quite empty because she had stupidly neglected to eat anything before her rehearsal.
She had her trusty and stupid Nemesis take her to SafeWay, where she bought herself a Wonderous Frozen 'Zza.

Oh, did I forget to leave out the part that makes this all so stupid? Stupid me: Her rehearsal was taking place in a QFC.

in other news...
One of my best friends is in Paris right now, after visiting Geneva and before going to Brussels.

sigh. Bastard.

Today, or yesterday now, I guess, is/was my dad's birthday. It's a day I usually avoid noticing, but for some reason this year it has been very much on my mind. I'm not sure why, but am definitely disturbed.

He would have been 60. And I wonder if maybe that doesn't have some shred of an explanation. My mom turned 50, and we threw her a surprise party, and if dad were alive, it would likewise be a milestone birthday for him.

Of the many sad things about the fact that he is dead the saddest by far to me is this: I can't find it in me to wish he were still here and celebrating birthdays; we're much better off for his absense and we know it.

It's one thing to reach adulthood and be able to assess that your father was a not very good person and know most of what he said can be utterly discounted. It's quite another to be the person who lived through being raised be him.

I expect everyone is left with sorrow that twists around something dark and unpalatable after a parent dies, so I needn't conclude that my particular flavour is as singular as it feels. I'm just extra aware of it tonight, that's all.

So apparently my body has pretty much given up on the whole sleeping at night thing. I'm not sure why, but trying to go to sleep when it is dark is lately always a struggle.

During the day, on the other hand, the sleeping is no problem. I sleep like a cat. By which I mean curled up in odd positions, for nap-lengthed time spans, and anytime I please.

In other news, I'm exploring the world of Having Given Up Cola. It is a world without stomach pain, which means it has a lot going for it. Fortunately tea seems to be allowed here. Otherwise it would also be the land of Serious Headaches and Eternal Drowsyness.

Aha!
The lying liar is, in fact a liar.

... but what I really wanted was a musical about vikings!
Hear ye, hear ye, my saviour is a liar
His nose is holy longer than telephone wire
He's up on the cross and his pants are on fire
You kneel to a crucifix, I have a pyre.

2:03am Status

So drunk that I don't realize I should keep track of how many pizza rolls I have eaten.

Not drunk enough to try and scam more.

Not really that drunk, really; just hungry and sleeeeeeepyyyyyy.

Dear People Having Loud Relationship Drama in the Extremely Hot Sound-Zone Between the Apartment Buildings While Listening to Lust For Life at 5 in the Evening:

Um, don't. Ok? Just...don't.

Reason I like sleeping in the daytime #38:
Much cooler more detailed dreams come to me during daylight sleeping.

Untruth Level: Pants On Fire

My own gifts for fiction have, I believe, allowed me to spot a similar talent in a new acquaintance.

I may be wrong, but I think not; the pattern was very familiar for an unprepared lie. Lie, deflect, retreat.

I should be sure within the week. I don't expect it to effect my behavior towards said person; it'll just be in my mental file for them.

Humour based on Robert's Rules of Order is not so much funny: ha ha as funny: jesus I'm a fucking geek.

So-Called Creative Procrastination

I'm specifically at my computer to type a speech which needs to be in the customer's hands later today. Naturally, I'm blogging instead.

I don't have an outside job today, so i could go to sleep and finish the speech during daylight, but the brain prefers the night. Plus I have a show early this evening, so I predict I'll be a bit distracted.

See, this is bad. I'm already anticipating making a big deal of this 15 minute play. Granting it to be important to me, blowing it out of proportion remains unwise from a very specific performing standpoint.

Although, compared to SOME who are involved, my calm is positively glacial. This fact will be of no help when my butt and I are out onstage.

Hey there!

I haven't been writing for awhile. it is because I have been sick and busy, busy and sick. No fun.

I have been busy due to the Mae West Fest. If you are in or near Seattle this weekend, perhaps you might consider attending the shows i am in:


Ghost Love
Sat (Jul 26) 1:25pm and 5:40pm
Sun 11:45am

Touch of the quandry, here.

I'm involved in a project that doesn't feel very, um, good for me just now. Like, whenever I go to work on it, i submerge into a deep dark sort of place and when i come out on the other side, i'm not in a very good mood. In spades.

Add to this the insecurity of being in a new place and the melancholy of all my old friends going about their lives quite without me and I'm not sure this Playwrighting from the Darkside is quite what I need.

Sigh.

beer, beer, beeeeeeeeeer, beer

I'm normally a hard liquor gal, but am finding this evening that as the poet said "Beer covers a host of sins."

I may be remembering that incorrectly, what with all the beer and all.

Actually what i could really go for right now would be a dirty martini. Yum. Mmmmmm. I wonder if there's a beer/rum martini recipe out there? Perhaps i could make one up. But would the rum be the vodka? And can a dill pickle spear substitute satisfactorily for an olive? i suspect not.

Blah, blah, blog

Right, so i suppose I should blog. The problem? Everything going on in my life right now is either boring or not something I wish to talk about.

Well, ok, some of it I would probably LIKE to talk about, but cannot for various reasons. Whee.

So instead I will blog about the fact that there is no solid chocolate in the house. I would really, really like a Twix bar right now. Caramel or peanut butter, I don't really care which.

How pathetic is it, really, to take a trip to the grocery just to get a package of Twix?

That's what I thought.

Actual conversations held in The St. Louis Embassy today:

"Who do you think is sexier: Mr. Bean or Benny Hill?"

and

"Yep, that's pretty horrendous."
"What is a horrend, anyway?"
"Not sure. It might have something to do with abhorrent."
"I think we're missing a step."
"In Germanic roots the D/T switch is actually very common."
"Ok, so a horrend is a horrent, which gets us to abhorrent, which essentially means...icky."
"Or repulsive."
"Ah, so a 'horrend' is obviously the same as a 'pulsive'."
"Obviously, but only once."
"So, what is a pulsive, anyway?"

*Bob would like me to point out that all grammatical aberrations in the preceding are mine and not his. So I did.

**I would like to point out that Bob is a language Nazi. I am a language artiste and pay him little mind.

***He really actually feels better after my posting this.

****"No gerunds for you!" he says.

I just watched The Philadelphia Story and Little Women on TCM and continue to be sad that Katharine Hepburn is dead.

"I have feet of clay. Good night little man."

sigh

In other news, Bob and I went kayaking today out on Lake Union and sang pirate songs in honour of Pirates of The Caribbean. We wandered off on a riff of combining smurf names with pirate names. One-eyed Smurf, Peg-leg Smurf, Smurf the Red Handed, Mr. Smurf, Long John Smurfer, Captain Ethel Smurfy, etc.

I had a dream the other night, when everything was still

So, this morning (or yesterday morning, for all you linear time fans out there) I had a very strange dream:

Kevin Spacey and I were in a play together, which was still in the rehearsal process, and apparently we were friends. So, we showed up to the rehearsement space together, hung out, and decided to play a trick on the actress playing my wife and his mistress. To wit: we were going to convince her that what the scene really needed was for her to take her clothes off. This appeared to be working when I woke up.

A friend of mine had a dream about hanging out with Kevin Kline in the same sleep-period. Obviously "Kevin" day in the collective brain.

What I thought of the Hulk, by Me

I did not go to see The Hulk out of fan-ish rabidity; I've never read a Hulk comic. And though i cherish a warm "Aw wasn't that cute?" nostalga for the TV show, the one episode of which i remember featured Jan Brady sucking rattlesnake poison out of an Old Man's leg, it's memory is by no means sacred.

I did not go see The Hulk because I absolutely love every comic-based movie that comes out. I find they range from tasty (Mystery Men) to inedible (DareDevil), no matter how cool their trailers are.

I did not go see The Hulk to be either delighted or outraged by the CG critter. George "ADD" Lucas underlined my already-formed hypothesis when he mucked about with ep. 6; any puppet or green-painted football player, no matter how lame, still looks like they are more really there than any animated-in-later thing.

I did go to see The Hulk because Ang Lee directed it. So, I can't truthfully say I was disappointed, because he did some cool visual directy things.

But I will reiterate one thing: It really helps a movie be better if you have a script before you start shooting it. As a bonus, it is nice if the script appears to have some sort of interior logic.

The only bad thing about watching my beloved baseball team on ESPN's DayGame naked is that I can't lend mojo to the eighth inning rally by turning my clothes inside out.

Obviously it's my fault we lost today.

H is for Hammer and Hoedown

Remember MC Hammer, he used to rap and dance,
He had a giant entourage and wore enormous pants?
He's come back from the 80s, where he was really cool,
To judge a TV talent show just like Paula Abdul.

I don't like the Spam, but the Spam likes me

So, if AOL is my champion against spam, who can protect me from the Spam AOL generates? Pop-ups when I sign on, I'm used to. Getting Pop-upped when I sign on AND when I sign off is a bit tiring.

Housekeeping note:

Jana has informed me the numbers on the comments notation appear to not be in working order. So, sorry if I haven't answered in a bit...I'll chase down the problem later in the day when i am less tired and more sober.

That much entertainment can ruin you for life

So I find I'm a bit spoiled by spending most of my social time around theatrrr people; I've become used to people who talk. A lot. Thus, when i find myself in a group which is not so, um, communicative, I'm not quite sure what to do. The conversation tends to ebb more than it flows. It seems very odd.

For instance, we barbeque-hopped today, and BBQs which had theatrrr people present had much more conversation going on than ones that didn't. Fortunately, the group entire need not be composed of theatrrr folk; the talk waves spread out to include everyone; however, there _is_ some threshold number, as i find i by myself am not enough.

This makes me think we could all hire ourselves out in groups as party-enliveners. Hmmm.

No cure for temping

The guy who is in charge of me at my current temp assignment looks quite a lot like Dennis Leary....or maybe I mean Dennis Miller.......no, pretty sure it's Leary. This is a bit disorienting, frankly. He'll be talking in a quite gentle voice about what the procedure is for distributing the mail and I keep expecting something like:

FUCKing mail, don't get me started on the fuckin' mail. You got your basic mailman, fucking guy shows up whenever the fuck he wants. Yeah, you gotta leave the mail on the counter by the front door, you don't know what's in there, could be confidential, could be a check for thousands of dollars, and it's your ass if it goes missing, but what do you got to do? Leave it on the counter. Leave it on the fucking counter where any bozo who isn't the bozo fucking mailman could just run off with it. Why? Because, you don't know when the mailman is going to fucking show up. That's right. Our daily local representative of our federal government and we don't know when he's gonna be here. It's like a stealth tactic. He says he'll show up between 10 and 3. 10 and 3, that's a, that's basically a 5 fucking hour window there. I mean, whoa, don't stress yourself out, getting our mail out on a schedule or anything, no, no take your time, stop off and get a hamburger, adopt a kitten, go recycling with a homeless person. Fucking mailman.

But he never does that. Not so far at least. Maybe tomorrow.

Blog Title

This is the paragraph where i complain about today's temp assignment being rather dull. also, i misspell a word oar two.

Here, i whinge about having to turn down a part.

Now express guilt about being in such a bad mood when i spoke to my mums this evening.

And my atte,pt to end with something clever falls flat as usual.

Things I would like to ask my temp agent but probably won't:

"Yo pimps, how come you don't be representin' me?"

"By business-casual, do you mean business-grunge or more business-slutty?"

"Ok, when you say Bob doesn't have my skill set, are you suggesting he can't sit on his ass and surf the internet for 8 hours as well as I can?"

I'm moody. I have moods. Of moroseness. Madness. Quite. And yet...

Right. So, I was all ready to blah blah blah for awhile about how depressed I've been lately. But then I left the house this afternoon, and out in the world i found:

A car that drove through a wall in a building right next to my dwelling. Things in my life could probably be worse.

A tree full of blue herons and their fledglings. There are still things of wonder of which i do not know.

A snowcone, which Bob bought for me. The simple sweet things are still good.

And a musical connection between a really good production of an adaptation of a quite old play, and an unwritten play based on someone's life which i am currently working on. A sign that I'm following the right, what?, path.

I don't know where I am just now, but depressed no longer covers it.

mood: bad
ass. ass. lousy. suck. hate. lousy. ass.
loathing hate rage crazy lame hate suck.
ack. grrr. slam. hate. lousy. fucking. mess.
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Wonky wonky wonk wonk

Suffering from allergies gone wild, I took a pill which tends to make me a little wonky. I did this right before going to a rehearsal, mind you, but only because the director has 3 cats.

Oddly, I actually liked the effect. A little wonk is apparently good for the lesbian ghost drama.

Of course, this could also have been wonkyness left over from my trip home. Many things happened, good and bad and "I don't know how I feel about them yet" and "I know how I feel and can't do a damn thing aout it". I'm still sorting.

Plus I've finished the Harry Potter book which, as I've mentioned, is a bit bleak.

So, I'm in a place of wonk and not quite sure where my head is to be found.

Thanks, but I already looked there.

harry potter five is dark and dreary
i think as i type all weak and weary
the shrimp curry which tasted yummy
sits all unsettled in my tummy

H to the P to the Order of the Phoenix

Yes, Harry Potter is in the hizouse, yo. As am I, after an absence of nearly a fortnight. My 2 long plane rides served as a great excuse to buy the book the day it came out, which was a bit needed, as I otherwise never purchase hardbacked copies of things for myself.

But, let's face it, it's been a bloody long time what with JK working on those crappy movies and all. I call them crappy because I find them dull. I thought the BBC adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia, stiff puppet Aslan and all, were oodles and gobs more magical.

Besides, since I bought it, I get to read it first.

I think I would complain less about being called for a 3 hour rehearsal and only working 30 minutes if I had a giant light-up sign with my name on it to sit in front of during my down time as in the Moby/Gwen Stefani South Side video. . . .

. . .or if I was getting reimbursed for my time as the Equity actors were, but I'm trying to be realistic here.

Is this a kissing play?

So I saw the BastardFest Scottish Play a few nights ago and was pretty subwhelmed. It was ok, shrug. There _was_, however, a lot more kissing going on than I ever remember before. It seemed as if the cast had a Kiss Fleance Onstage game going on. If they did, Banquo definitely won.

I went to the zoo today. I got to see the new penguin/puffin house. It was just as stinky as the old one, plus there are fewer barriers between the children and the animals. We've started a pool on how long before a kid gets attacked or falls in. I say 4 weeks.

The Simple Things

Breathing is good. Having to remove early from your mom's new condo to stay at a friend's house because you are severely allergic to something in the condo is not so good. Waking up because you can't breathe is really not good at all.

In other news, have just received word from the coast that I've been cast in a musical, for the first time in 9 years. Herm.

It's kind of cool to arrive home to find that your sister has become a more tolerant individual while you were away......especially after recently telling a story about her former racist tirades.

In other news, I'm accompanying her, her best friend, and her best friends' bridesmaids wedding dress shopping today. This is a little chore I managed to pretty much duck for my own wedding, so this should be, um, interesting? Whee.

So, here I am, safe on the ground in St. Louis, reunited (and it feels so good) with my internet access, and wondering if one state can really have a distinctive smell as compared to another, or if I'm just insane.

Not that the two are mutually exclusive, mind you.

Anyway, when I get a longer second, I'll share a bit about my flight from Seattle to Phoenix; I had no one to snark to on the plane, so I wrote stuff down.

The Birthday Girl, The Birthday Girl, Get Anything I Want 'Cause I'm The Birthday Girl

(thanks to Mr. Kaduce for the birthday song.)

Hello, and welcome to this, the anniversary of my birth. Hope you are all having a lovely day, and feel free to enjoy yourselves. (Even though it is MY birthday, I won't be greedy and hog all the joy.)

IF JUNE 10 IS YOUR BIRTHDAY ... you are attracted by power. (ok, well, yeah, but who isn't?) You like to call the shots but may only do so from behind the scenes. (that's about half right) A newfound seriousness and sense of duty (?!?) may involve females or a new love. (or both!) This is a year where you're seeking easy answers. You have a natural affinity for the sea, and a cruise brings relaxation. (cool) Children try your loving patience. (that's an understatement) It's a year to tie up loose ends...(...with extreme prejudice?)

Turtle Woman Has Come To Warn You

Beware, beware perky Broadway ingenues. Take heed middle-age musical matrons. Lo, you producer women of indeterminent age, HEAR ME!

Hear me, fear me for I am Turtle Woman and I am here before you as a hideous example for the future fate which awaits you in the future.

Witness how my mouth stretches the width of my face, yet does not move. Behold how my eyes have begun a migratory recession into the skull so cunningly almost concealed beneath my so-called skin. Note that I appear to have NO NOSE!

Repent, repent, shun the plastic surgeon, abhor the nose job, and for god's sake moisturize. Your Botox will not save you!!!!!!

Where have all the archives gone, long time passing?

This move over to Blogger 2 Electric Boogaloo seems to have made my archives disappear. Weird.

Now I'm trying to decide whther I should go on a quest to recover them, or be very very thankful that certain passages can never be read again.....

Nature vs. Culture

It's obviously the recessive white trash gene in my veins rearing its ugly mullethead making me feel unabridged glee about Monster House.

Monster House, on the Discovery Channel (entertain your brain), is the new home improvement show brought to you by the friendly folk at Monster Garage.

In the Monster Garage, everything gets turned into a muscle car and/or hot rod (UPS trucks, limos, Mini Coopers, skateboards, etc), so one can imagine what happens to a house under their gentle guidance:

It Becomes TOTALLY COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was a car hood hanging on the kitchen wall which, after you press one of those giant yellow switch thingies, became the table. The cooking area was redone in that shiny, zig-zag ridged metal and had hoses above which you pulled down to get: a water dispenser, an egg beater, and a blow torch (I wouldn't've guessed those guys knew about creme brulees). They turned the dad's easy chair into a go-cart.

Oh, and they put the bed on giant shocks. Awyeah.

Funny how last night, when Blogger wasn't letting me play, I had lots of stuff to write about but this morning can't recall a bit of it. Only things on my mind just now are chores and errands:

Empty/fill/run dishwasher, get packing tape, pay car bill, buy plane ticket, go to post office, work on website, do research, exercise.

Yup. Vastly exciting, that.

My temp agents, various, when calling before 8 am, invariably ask if they've woken me up. Since "Well, duh!" doesn't seem to be a very politic response, I've taken to lying to them. Except this morning, when I was actually awake. What is wrong with me?
~
These split keyboard thingies are not the greatest for us hunt-and-peck typers. (Don't bother lecturing; as long as I can do 45 wpm my way, I'll not learn the "real" way.)
~
Men indicate that they are the evil versions of themselves by adding goatees (sp?), but what can women do? Maybe a cape or something?

We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity...for a time

It'll sound old fashioned of me, but I'm really fond of movies from that era when they had scripts. They had these people called "screenwriters" who wrote these "scripts," which were full of "wit" and "subtext."

I know, I know, it sounds boring, but the people back then seemed to like it. Probably didn't know better. Hadn't seen The Brady Bunch Variety Show yet.

Notorious is a damn fine movie and all, but I still say the DVD release of Double Indemnity which is apparently in the works, and was apparently the reason I couldn't locate a copy of it today for love nor money better bring new freakin' glorious meaning to the phrase "special features."

it wantsss itsss commentsss back.

template troublessssssss my precioussssssssss

Hey, it's June! And I have a birthday soon.

The Freedom to Suck

After going out for late-nite drinking-slash-socializing, we are now the proud owners of a vacuum cleaner. Why? Because Jana and Brian are really cool, that's why.

Tangentally, I've never really gotten why it's called a vacuum cleaner. It doesn't clean vacuums. You could just call it a vacuum, but it's not a vacuum, it just creates a vacuum. So it's a vacuum creator.

More tangentally from Bob, "Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner."

I haven't had a chance to use it yet, because we got home at 3 in the morn and our downstairs neighbors are both light sleepers and ceiling bangers.

Fucking ceiling bangers, get some fucking balls and come upstairs to yell at me. (hmmm, that sounds naughtier than i intended)

Yes, just like on Seinfeld, part 2

Being a Standardized Patient (pretend patient, fake patient, etc) is actually not as interesting as Kramer made it look...but then again, what is?....nor is it as interesting as it sounds. I have this knack for finding employment which is far more intriguing to tell people about than it actually is to do.

For example: Fire Hydrant Painter. I spent 3 summers doing this during college. People who see it on my resume invariably ask about it (which is why it's still on there), because they've never heard of such a thing before. Most people really don't think about fire hydrants very often.

And there's no reason why they should. Spending 40 hours a week in the St. Louis sauna-season clad in long polyester pants, steel-toed workshoes, and a hard hat, with only hydrants for company does not foster the healthiest mental state.

I started composing songs about hydrants. They I started serenading them. Why? Because it was dull work, dull, dull, lonely and dull, that's why.

However disturbing my impromptu maintainence concerts were to the random passers-by, it was probably nothing to the day I spent a half hour writhing in pain on someone's lawn because I'd smashed my finger with a hydrant wrench.

You know those times when social interactions have gotten so painful and complicated you just want to assume the fetal position until it has all passed? Yeah, well, drinking doesn't make all that any smoother. Whoop.

So, what's on my mind today?

The fact that, as I type, my mums and sister are half the country's length away moving out of the house I grew up in. Said house will, within a month or so, be demolished for an airport expansion which has been in the works for, hmm, over 10 years now.

I'm feeling kind of bad about not being there to help. On the other hand, the distance is probably helping dampen the weirdness of the whole thing for me. Plus, the airport pays for packing and moving, so there's not like there would be anything for me to do.

Sigh. It was a nice little house, ranch and suburban cookie-cutter though it might have been.

(If I had the capabilities on my blog, I would post a picture of the house here. Instead, feel free to fill in with your imagination.)

No one must touch my blue bookcase

Interior decorators seem to think books are room accessories. This makes me laugh.

But then again, this is from someone who has over 700 books in 6 bookcases in their living room.

I wear my sunglasses, except when i don't

I wore my glasses to work this morning and changed into my contacts right before heading outside to lunch. What with being extremely sleepy this morning, running late, and generally experiencing dumbassedness, I left my sunglasses at home. This was a problem.

You see, I have quite light-coloured eyes, which means they are pretty sensitive to brightness. Having lenses suctioned to them only seems to make this worse, what with the focusing going on and all. Then, of course, there are other aggravating factors from time to time, like allergies...tiredness...it's being Thursday.

All factors conspired today to make reading scripts printed on ultra-white paper perhaps not the wisest thing. So I dosed and watched kiyakers instead.

Alsoooooo....besides the physical discomfort of my eyeballs hissing and cringing like vampires in the noonday sun, there's a certain psychological balance I get from wearing the sunglasses that I miss when I'm not wearing them. I think people can't see my eyes which, logically-and-of-course, also makes me feel that I'm invisible.

Naturally this is all delusion, but it's darn convincing. Leaves me feeling free to relax and observe and generally be a smartass. And isn't THAT a fun time for everyone. Yeah, suuuuuuuuure.

Right now, I find myself missing my tiny St. Louis apartment where I could work on my computer and watch The Dark Crystal at the same time.

When I say "work," please understand that I mean playing The Sims.

So, now I might wonder why I'm still awake. I might well wonder, because I'm operating on very little sleep right now. Usually, when there is this little sleeping, there is a tech week involved but, alas, nothing so interesting just now. Rather, weirdly, I'm finding it very hard to sleep. This is not at all a normal problem for me. One of the things I continually bless my college education for is the talent it helped me develop of being able to sleep anytime i needed to and for as long as I'd like. Sleeping, for me, often takes the place of leisure activities. It's the ultimate indulgence. But, these past 10 days or so, the sleeping has been ebing away. It seems to be stress related. Last night I lay awake in bed for over 2 hours, so tense you could've bounced quarters off of me. I also seem to have a writing bug, which also usually deprives me of sleep, luscious nectar of the gods, sleeeeeeeep, [insert bad luck scottish play quotation here if you dare, but i'm certainly not bloody going to]. Maybe if I just finish the play, the brain will let me sleep.

Current reason for listening to pop radio stations: Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5

This goes on in my head at night (warning: icky)

Had a dream where I was a cook. For an ogre. We were making a special Oscar Night dinner. Because Siskel and Ebert had been invited over.

For this special dinner we needed a freshly killed peasant. The ogre, being an ogre, undertook this chore himself, which is sort of nice of him if you are me in the dream and not the peasant. As the ogre kills the peasant, my viewing of the event takes on a Bruce-Campbell-movie sort of quality.

The ogre cuts off one of the peasant's arms. The peasant grabs an ax and leaps onto a table to defend himself which is plucky, though useless. The ogre takes out the guy's legs next and quickly reduces him to a head, which is still alive and apparently not in pain, because it is still making spirited remarks, until it spots its own destroyed body on the floor of the kitchen as the ogre carries it to the stew pot. Then the head starts to cry. The ogre says "I tol you not to look" (sounding oddly like Hagrid) and pops out the head's eyes before tucking it very gently into the pot.

Next thing I know I'm making peasant-liver pate and reflecting on what a waste it all is since Siskel and Ebert are invited every year and never show up.

The First Rule of Italian Driving

I really think I would be better off if I removed the rearview mirror from my car during rush hours. Ever since the incident with the truck and the other incident with the semi-truck, I'm much happier not knowing what's behind me...especially when what's behind me isn't showing any signs that it is slowing.

obsess, occupy, haunt, beset, besiege

Obsession: The action of any influence, notion, or fixed idea which persistently assails or
vexes, especially so as to discompose the mind.

I obsess. I have an obsessive personality. I obsess about things. Well, things, ideas, and people. Ok, mostly people.

I have no idea why i’m this way. It used to bother me. It still bothers me sometimes, when i forget that it’s not supposed to be bothering me anymore.

My current theory holds that obsession is my hobby. What would normally be my hobby I consider the main business of my life. The things i do to make money are not interesting enough to qualify as either hobby or career, but do take up a king’s portion of my time.

So, if i’m to have a hobby it has to be something i can do while i’m doing everything else that i’m doing, right? Right.

Obsession is portable, quiet, easy, desolves instantly in liquid and is one of the deadlier perfumes known to man.

Also, in a way, it’s kind of fun. I fear this is a perverse notion. It’s this enjoying the obsession thing that bothers me when it bothers me. I don’t think you, meaning me, are supposed to enjoy being obsessed.

Yes, just like on Seinfeld

I was very irresponsible this weekend, which was really quite nice, both in the ways in which I was irresponsible and in the fact that I had the irresponsible options that I had.

However, I've put brakes to the bandwagon for the evening and am doing laundry and dishes and learning my case for tomorrow.

As I repeat that last bit in my head (I'm not talking to myself outloud here, I promise) I think that it sounds all cool and lawyer-like. This makes me realize exactly how much of a nerd I still am, given that what I think is cool is really not very.

I'm actually learning a case for my job as a Standardized Patient, which involves pretending to be various different people with various ailments.

things on my mind
~ isn't reality tv impromptu drama as opposed to improv drama, and how can i explain what i mean by that?
~ what is a saturn return? apparently i'm in one. i hope it doesn't involve losing another car.
~ would going to med school be insane? why or why not?
~ does mamet _really_ write his plays, or does he just improv them blair witch style?
~ when is king arthur coming back, anyway?
~ who needs sleep?

Today's Topics

With Digital Cameras, We Can All Be George Hamilton
and
How My Temp Agencies Are Like A Bad Boyfriend

Because, basically, I'm still 12,
the Weird Al Yankovich parody of that freakin' annoying Avril L. song had me laughing my pants off. Really. I am now pantsless. Wait, check that, it was my shirt. Whatever. (heavy guitar riff)

Not only are Weird Al's lyrics far more interesting than Avril's, but his voice isn't nearly as whiny (though you can tell he's trying really hard). Textbook example of a win-win situation, methinks.

The Next President

If I get my way, that is: Dr. Howard Dean. Check out the blog his peops run, yo.

Cruel or Unusual?

Does rewriting the words to Tom Jones songs so that they have to do with my cat and then serenading him (the cat) with said songs fall in the unethical treatment of animals category? 'Cause if it does, I should probably stop. Or you should probably call Peta. Or both.

Dear Help Desk People,

First things first: yes, I have already turned my computer off and back on.

I am aware that much of your working day, and thus an unnatural chunk of your life, is filled with answering rude e-missives from people who have all of the technological understanding of a striped sweat sock.

And I feel for the time you must waste, paid time though it may be, directing and redirecting these people, who should not be allowed access to anything more electronically complex than a brick, to the instructions and FAQ pages which clearly and completely cover their concerns.

I can understand that you might be bitter.

However, I would like to drop you a hint that when you don't carefully read a carefully constructed questioning e-mail, you not only run the risk of answering and reanswering the wrong bloody question, you are making the same error as the technoneadrathals, thus sacrificing the High Ground of Self-Righteousness

And I don't think you really want to do that. The High Ground is so comfy.

Love,
Me

Ads As Windows into the Soulless

Dr. Scholl's foot supports are very comfy and, I doubt not, really good for your general ped-health, but there is no way, just really no way at all, to make them "cool." You also can not make them "hip," "bitchin'" or even "boss." Particularly not by calling wearing them, ahem, "gellin."

Who do we like least in this scenario: The boyfriend who goes to a club and flirts with 2 pretty girls while his girlfriend is off studying? The best friend who decides to take a picture of this activity and cell-phone it to the girlfriend? Or the girlfriend who decides an appropriate, not to mention mature, response is to get it on with a cute boy in the library? I'll D) all of the above for $200, Alex.

I'd also like to state for the record that if I had a girlfriend who used leaving me as a tactic to get attention and then immediately turned around and called a friend to brag about how it worked while still in my presence, I might just like my candy bar and television stories more than her too. Just sayin'.

Imaginary Victorian Poets Take Control

I've been re-reading Possession by A.S. Byant, which is a quite good book (way better than the over-Hollywoodized movie directed by Neil "I expected better from you" LaButte).

Besides being a highly intellectualized romance, it contains wrighting in several distinctly different voices of scholars and poets who did not, in fact, exist.

After 500-odd pages of it, though, the rhythms have kind of taken over my brain. As witnessed here.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. (Possessed by imaginary dead victorian pirates is good.)

Rachel and the busy week

The lack of blogging was probably a clue, but I've had a busy week. How busy was it? It was soooo busy, it was as busy as some other busy things which were busy.

I had to get up every morning BEFORE 7am. Really. And then get dressed, leave the house, and (get this) be coherent before 7:30. Weirdness. At least it was to go pretend illness for pre-doctors, which is fun, even in the morning before god gets up.

And then it was also tech week for a staged not-really-a-reading I was in. It was a pretty gentle tech week but, still, every session went overtime.

And there was some auditioning.

So, most of my home time revolved around sleep and food, or food and sleep, or seeping floods, or feeding sheep. But not blogging.

"You guys are dorks!" Kik cried delightedly

When she discovered we own Lord of The Rings Risk. (We also have Star Wars Epic Duels which I highly recommend for a fast-paced, multi-player, geeky good time.)

Jana is off getting her PhD hood this weekend. And what have I done? I've kicked Bob's elvin ass at LotR Risk, that's what.

I owed him that for Brainwashing my Alabaster Dragon when we played Magic this week.

Maybe we should get jobs soon.

Not a good sign

When you want to turn around during the final moments of the play and slap the director, 10 to 1 you've not enjoyed your theatrrrical experience.

It's very hard to go see a play you love and know better than the contents of your freezer. . .especially when you'd like to direct it someday. I know this, and should know better than to go see a production of it in a normal state of mind.

Sigh.

It's very hard to stand when your favourite playwright's, about whom there is what you hold to be a general misimpression abroad, best known work is being presented in a way that only serves to worsen the negative impression.

'Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel," one of my favourite quotes, clues me in that a playwright seen as "too" intellectual, is quite possibly writing comedies. I think at least the director should consider this idea. Just my opinion.

Oh, and bloody DO IT FASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

an evening in the warm blue glow

~ Experienced my first and let's hope only ever 5 minutes of American Idol. I'd been under the mistaken impression that it was a contest. I hadn't realized it was a variety show.

~ West Wing was lovely. Despite the hype and lameness of pulling something that has only happened once ever in the whole history of the United States, it's still the most intelligent show on television. Also, one of the tech actors from SportsNight was in the press core. T'Hee.

~ Halfway through South Park, I was being bludgeoned with the premise club and enjoying it. That's just the kinda gal I am.

~ The news, guest starring John Malkotraz. The Magical Victory Tour is coming to take you away. Do you have your roadmap?

~ Had to fill a television gap here with an episode of SprtsNite. I conclude that I am glad not to be dating any of the female characters.

~ Not to be nitpicky, but I think the OffRoad Vehicle Golf episode of Junkyard Wars (Amer. version) is, um, stretching a bit. Sure, the vehicles were cool, but are they useful in any real-life situation? Well, besides when you run into a giant golf course in the middle of the desert. Or in the middle of dessert, but then you probably just need a spoon.

so today blogging counts as "work"

I'm procrastinating working on my bidness site, yo, so I'm blogging instead. Apparently my fuzzy wuzzy brain has decided that any task I put off is as close to being work as any other. Figures. This is how I get away with reorganizing my pez collection instead of doing laundry.

Wall of Seduction

I like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. Why? Because I'm an intellectual snob, and if I weren't intelligent i would have to be snobbish towards myself, which is kind of tricky. Not like I can not invite myself to parties or anything like that. But I stray.

Today, in rehearsal, I was given my least favourite bit of direction, my own personal Direction of Death, if you will. The director told me to "seduce" my "husband." Canned Jesus on a cracker, I thought, while smiling gamely and saying "Ok, sure." Because I knew what would follow: I would be mocked.

I can't seduce people. Thus I cannot pretend to seduce people. Because I don't get "seduction" as a concept, the way some people don't get "unified field theory" or "common sense" or "freedom of speech" or, etc, ad nauseum.

If I want to have sex with someone, I'll have sex with them, and would generally prefer to go ahead and do that, and if I don't, no amount of intense glancing or candle lighting or footsie playing during chess is going to make me. If someone I want can't be gained by removal of my and/or their clothing, well, they are going to remain unseduced.

When you dream you are on Real World/Road Rules Battle of The Sexes, but that instead of being voted off one by one, everyone is being picked off by a serial killer, what does that mean? (Besides that you watch too much crappy television.)

Go ahead, offer me some cheese
I will try to keep some sense of proportion here. So I'm not going to say, "Waiting to not hear about auditions is the worst feeling in the world."

There are worse feelings. I've experienced many of them. I should be thankful I don't feel them more often and willing to take theatrrical unhappiness to avoid all the rest.

"Should" being the operative word in that sentence.

Waiting to not be cast is certainly the worst feeling I experience on a regular basis.

It is because of this, though there are still more actors, many more, than the market can bear, because of this many actors go about disguised as bank managers and soccer moms.

(Though I've whined about this quite too much, I expect it hasn't been enough yet. Fact: Depressed actors are boring.)

When Reality and Science Fiction Collide

Well, you get some really kick-ass theatrrr is what happens. It will be silly and scary, there will be blood and glowing things, and some fun acting.

You also get a supposedly reasonable human who is convinced that cell cloning is the cure to all diseases and it is not being done only because The Evil Pharmaceutical Companies Conspire Against It.

In one of these cases you will be vastly entertained and not think about going to the bathroom or look at your watch (or, in my case, wish you were wearing a watch you could look at) once for an entire hour and a half.

In the other you will apparently become engrossed in your palm pilot (playing Tetris, but no one need know that) until the person wanders away.

Today I met a guy who has had Tom Stoppard's mail misdirected to him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because they have flats in the same building in London!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I managed to touch him. No, not THAT way.

Do You Believe In Life After Cher?

Or, Why Rachel Wants to Be a Diva

If I were a diva, I wouldn't have to continue working on any of my theatrrr skills. I wouldn't have to be able to sing, dance, or act. I would just have to be able to walk and wear extremely silly costumes.

If I were a diva, I could tell Britney Speers to piss off in front of a captive audience of several thousand. If I told her to piss off right now, no one but the cat would hear me.

If I were a diva, I wouldn't have to desist using the tub spa as soon as the clock strikes ten because my downstairs neighbors are early risers, or something. I wouldn't have downstairs neighbors. Or I would send half of my entourage down to deal with them. Booyeah.

How I can Tell i've had enough to drink

I'm rocking the desk chair to annoy the cat and laughing hysterically as he turns and gives me a reproachful look.

We were going to go see A Mighty Wind tonight. That didn't work out, so we went out and drank instead. 'S a good trade.

Temporary Quandary

To readjust the desk chair or not to readjust the desk chair?

I run into this question a lot, because I tend to get a lot of short-term assignments. (Which, despite all my explainations of, blah blah blah, actor going on auditions, blah blah blah, faux patient for med students, etc., is really just because I hate offices and can't stand any of them for longer than a week or two.)

If it's just a one-day stint, it seems horribly rude. However, it sucks being all stiff and sore at the end of an office-sitting day just because some weirdo you haven't and will never meet needs to have their ass at a 45 degree angle relative to the floor.

Note to self:

Must remember to bring book to one-day temp assignments. Writing notebook will have exhausted it's entertainment value by lunch break. Then you will find yourself wandering around downtown Edmonds with nothing to do.

Note to cosmos:

I will probably go see A Mighty Wind this weekend, so I officially do not need to see the trailer any more. Really, I only needed to see it once, so the other 6 times were overkill.

I also do not need to see the trailer for The Good Thief ever again, but this is not because I intend to go see it. Unless you replace Nick Nolte with...any actor who is not Nick Nolte.

I could, however, stand to see The Matrix sequel trailer please.