doesn't mean i'm sorry

i guess there's two things i need to blog about, or they didn't happen.

item one:
i saw video nerd and whatsherface in the crowd at ladytron/the faint on saturday. i think video nerd saw me and made an awful face. i had a huge history with both of those bands with whatsherface, and something about that night was perfect for ACTUAL CLOSURE. like, watching her watch those bands just caused something to snap in my brain, and suddenly there was nothing i wanted to say to her ever again. this probably has a lot to do with item two, but i digress. it was cathartic.

afterwards, i went to janine's birthday party, and as i'd actually met janine through whatsherface i felt it was important to mention my sighting upon my arrival. she informed me that whatsherface and video nerd had already told her that if i showed up at her birthday party, they wouldn't attend. these people have known janine for over a decade, and are nearly 30. i've known her for uh, the three years i've spent not speaking to these psychos, and didn't want to cause a turf war. still, GROW THE FUCK UP. i told her she could tell them - no, she SHOULD and MUST tell them - that i don't give a fuck anymore and they need to get over it. i still exist, and i also win.

ladytron were boring btw. the faint were fun, but the last record isn't that great. still glad i went.

item two:
i met a girl!
i met her off autostraddle actually. riese is probs going to explode when/if she reads that. riese, this is my test to see if you still read my blog.

we met cute, like in the movies. like, she was kate hudson and i was matthew mcconaughey, only there was facebook and whiskey involved. and i'm lizzy kaplan obvs.

i don't want to talk about it too much cos i don't want to jinx it, but right now i am really excited about her. it has been pointed out by friends who know me well that i'm smiling a lot these days.
trust me - she's pretty precious.
ok, i'm gonna stop before i make myself vomit.

anyway, it feels good to not have anything negative to say for once.
once my people were slaves in the land of egypt, and then they ate matzo ball soup, and now it's not so bad.

premature spring

wanna know something hilarious? it's officially a year since i was laid off from my ridiculous former job. i'm STILL listed on their company website, despite having emailed them half a dozen times asking to be removed, and do you want to know WHY? because i was the only person there who knew how to use the internet! sigh. it's been a rough year, but not the worst year of my life, i guess. i win at recessions, and one day i'll have a youtube show where i talk about what i ate during the depression, like my hero clara.

oh! i went on a vacation i couldn't afford!

sxsw was of course amazing, save for the hours we spent being shuttled around various airports in north carolina due to FOG of all things.. i arrived six hours late and kirsten arrived a full twenty four hours late, which is total bullshit. never flying us airways again. obvs they lost my luggage, just as an extra fuck you. once i arrived, it turned out sarah (lawrence's sister, with whom we were splitting a room) had packed extra everything, down to an extra toothbrush - so she saved my life. we saw a ton of shows, which i recounted extensively over at autostraddle. my favourites were probably little boots, peter murphy, yelle (all 15 minutes of it), devo, the pains of being pure at heart, pj harvey (!!!) and amanda palmer, who i definitely developed a pretty serious crush on during the course of my amanda palmer DAY. i met margaret cho and was super nerdy about it. got to spend some quality time with aimee, jamie and chelsea, which hadn't happened in over a year. i went to frankenberry's weirdo sxsw party and got drunk with little boots, her crazy hot boyfriend and her not-so-hot friend (not pictured), who tried to pick me up by showing me all his wristbands and pointing out how adorable his english accent was - and by pick me up, i mean telling me point blank: "i think we should have sex. i think you should be my girlfriend - just for tonight, anyway. i'd really like to touch your breasts." FAIL. i did make out with some skinny kid with a septum ring and a huge scar on his wrist. he swore he was 23 but i didn't believe him. sxsw win!

we ran everywhere, did EVERYTHING, and now we're back and it's cold and grey and i'm a lump of fail again. i wish every day could be like it was in austin, hot and dry, with cheap food and booze everywhere, with bands i like playing 14-16 hours a day within walking distance of my plush hotel room. i guess i wouldn't appreciate it so much if this was so.

anyway, now i am really and truly broke, and throwing myself into working as many shifts as i possibly can - i'm supposed to pick up a new club soon, which is big. i need all the moneys i can get at this point.

in other news, it seems pretty likely that in two weeks i will be in the same room as whatsherface, at a gig for a band with whom we once shared an adorable history. we've avoided this moment for three years and she doesn't know it's coming (i don't think, although i'm sure she suspects). while it's likely we won't see each other at all, just knowing that she's there will probably drive me to distraction. last night i dreamt that i cornered her and screamed at her, with a lot of rage i'm not absolutely sure i have. just the thought of making eye contact across the room... it's eaten me alive for the past couple of weeks. i'm bringing melody and marlon as backup, not that i expect a problem, but one never knows. there is no way it could possibly end well. so glad i spent a year and a half in therapy because of this girl, only to become a ball of nerves again at the very thought of spotting her across a crowded room. i'm not even so much worried about my reaction - it's hers.

i'm gonna be strong, i'm gonna be fine, don't worry about this heart of miiiiine.

at least it's getting warmer... i hope i'll blog more often, as autostraddle is kind of taking up all my creative energy at the moment. i haven't even updated the food blog! who AM i?

the truth is out there

hoooo, have i dropped the ball or what?

we named the kitten "scully" btw. shannon and i sat down on the couch and refused to leave until that kitten had a name, and we finally opted to nerd out. now when she's missing for hours at a time i generally assume she's been abducted. cute. she believes in SCIENCE! also she just got fixed so she's significantly less annoying, and now her love is only for fox mulder and a pink catnip mouse.

i leave for texas tomorrow morning, EARLY - if you remember last year, then you know this year will be ridiculous. i've got a little more responsibility in that i'm supposed to do one prescheduled interview (with julie from northern state) and whatever i can grab, and also document the journey extensively for a project i'll talk about in a minute, but basically my primary goal is to hustle the fuck out of a JOB. good fuckin' luck, right? my secondary goal is to get rip-roaring drunk and make out with another rapper's girlfriend. or, you know, if the first one is around... oh, i'd also like to see some bands.

i have been very creative in my money-making endeavours as of late. a few weeks ago i was selected for an anxiety study, for which i had to sit on the phone for an hour-long survey about times i feel anxiety (read: all the time), and then was meant to come in for an MRI. they were gonna look at pictures of my brain and compare them to the brains of normal people. i live in bushwick, the study was in manhattan on 168th street, and i was unimpressed. when i got there, the guy told me i needed to provide a saliva sample, take a pregnancy test, and oh - remove all my earrings.

this shouldn't be a big deal, but i have twelve holes in my ears - doesn't really seem like that many, six in each ear. how many did claudia from the babysitters club have?! (nine, i think). my conch piercing is still pretty new and probs shouldn't come out. regardless, they were paying me a hundred bucks, so i figured "what the hell." i went into the bathroom to start taking out my earrings. i have twelve of them. with the exception of the conch, which is a barbell that's flat on one end, the rest are those little steel rings with the ball in them, which are a bitch to take in and out. i was in that bathroom for an hour, messing with these little fucking rings, and after i dropped one ball down the sink i started to get pissed off. in the meantime, the guy started getting really condescending, which was weird, asking me what i'd do in an emergency - can you imagine an emergency in which i'd have to take all my earrings off in a hurry? and if i did, like, if i had to be rushed to the emergency room, they could do WHATEVER THEY HAD TO to get them off, cut them, whatever. this was just irritating. i understand that any metal around my head would distort the image of my brain, but i could have done without the attitude.

finally i tried to take out the conch, and realized i couldn't. the barbell isn't really made to be removed, and i struggled with it until my hand was literally bleeding. ultimately, i got to a point where this frustration stopped being worth a hundred bucks. i told the guy i couldn't do the study, they paid me twenty five bucks for doing the questionnaire, and i spent most of that money replacing the earring that fell down the sink. i got home and discovered to my dismay that i was now faced with the task of putting all those little balls back in. this is obnoxious to do once, but especially obnoxious to do eleven times. sigh.

the short version of this story is that despite naming my kitten after a famous performer of autopsies, i am ready to renounce science. anyway i already diagrammed my brain for them, you can see it in my article (read on).

so i've been asked to be the music writer over at autostraddle, riese's new website for gay and kinda gay ladies, which is interesting because (as i stated in my first post) i don't really identify as anything in particular - however, it's a kick ass team and i consider myself lucky to be working among them. most of my sxsw reporting will be for that site, although i'll probably want to do a little something over here as a personal record of my experiences.. man, there are only so many hours in the day, so we'll see how that goes. anyway, i named my column "the beat on the street" and you can read my first one here.

um, what else.. nasty little crush that will not die. it will never happen. nice to have a crush though sometimes, makes leaving the house seem more appealing. i've been mega boring the last few weeks, really only going out for work and drinking, kind of disgusting myself. hoping sxsw will be the jump i need to get myself back... into myself? meh.

what's new pussycat?

i adopted a kitten!

this is what she looks like:

you can't tell from the picture, but she's really tiny - like 5 months old, barely weighs anything.
she needs a name! HALP.

considered names:
- ayn (for ayn rand, also a letter in the hebrew alphabet! hi grandma!)
- dagny (my favourite literary heroine, from atlas shrugged by ayn rand. smart, sexy, bold, independent, lives for the sake of no man, but is still kind of a harlot)
- firefly (as an homage to rob zombie, although it also sounds like the kind of thing some 13-year-old wiccan would name their cat)
- firecrotch (obvs)
- lilo
- sasha fierce
- goddess of fierce
- TYRA MAIL!!!
- rae (after christina ricci in black snake moan, because she's in heat and won't stop howling for cock)

here are things you should know about her:
- she's in heat (as i mentioned), and mews a lot, except she's a baby so her voice is all high and it's adorable rather than irritating. she's getting fixed within the week hopefully so this will go away, but it's highly entertaining. i live with a kitten in heat, and now i know billy ray cyrus feels! hey-o.
- she is a future model for ROLcats.
- she's kind of girly. i think she might be the kind of animal who has to have a person's name.
- she hides inside the couch. for a long time i didn't know where she was going, but now i know she is in narnia half the time. she is interested in time travel, space travel, space odysseys, david bowie, dimension x, krang and shredder.

right now we are calling her cheezburger, but that cannot last forever. help!

it's not unusual

following a few days of feeling like my insides were on my outsides, i've been doing a bit better. the downside of this is that my insomnia is back. maybe insomnia isn't the right word anymore, because i do sleep - i think most insomniacs suffer because they have jobs or routines that require them to awaken at a certain time ANYWAY, so if they can't fall asleep before 6am, they're fucked - game over. i don't really have anywhere special to be before 4pm or so on a good day, so when i crash i often wake up at 1pm or somewhere thereabouts. when this happens, that's it - the whole day's shot, i'm disoriented and confused about how i'm supposed to make up for lost time, and the result is often that i'll be up even later the next day. i rarely see the sun, my schedule makes no sense, and i'm worried that daylight savings time will make this even worse. i tried ambien, cutting out caffeine, setting an alarm for earlier and earlier - nothing's really helping. i've always been a night owl, but this is something else. maybe it's not so much insomnia as a lack of structure.

right now i am bone tired, but sleep is impossible.

i signed a lease last week, which means that as of march 1 this apartment is mine and mine alone. my subletters are staying until they presumably find something they like better, but that's really up to them - i like them and don't mind if they stay, but this will be my residence for some time to come, and roommates can come and go depending on whatever. the landlord worked at that real estate place i temped at back in april - he's been really cool about everything and crossed off anything even mildly restrictive on the lease (wanna open a brothel in my living room? it's totally cool!). this is without a doubt the nicest apartment i've ever lived in, and the potential is there for it to be a really comfortable home for me. i've already embarked upon a massive backyard renovation project, which will hopefully result in some sort of amateur gardening come spring and vegan bbqs come summer.

it's also one of the first major decisions i've ever made without consulting my parents first - not that i need or seek their permission, but i like to know that they think i'm doing the right thing. when i told my mom a few days after the fact, she was quiet for a minute and then said "...that's a big responsibility." thanks for the vote of confidence, mom!

truth is, it IS kind of huge, saying i'm going to be somewhere for a year or saying i'm going to do ANYTHING for any length of time, at least on paper. nothing else in my life is quite that permanent.

i have this friend janine who i'd describe as a punk rock vegan revolutionary, and she's kinder to animals than almost anyone i know. a few weeks ago she was stumbling home drunk following a night of godknows what, and on the way she apparently adopted a stray kitten who'd been foraging near her apartment. janine woke up the next day and was relieved to find a kitten sleeping next to her and not a 40-year-old romanian dude. since then she's been desperately trying to find the poor little thing a home (advertising her as having "cheezburger potential"), and on sunday i agreed to take her in. can i afford her? not really, but she needs a home and i know i'll find a way to give her one.

the kitten's supposed to arrive this weekend, after she's been spayed and given the appropriate shots. she's cute; we'll talk about her later. janine's a saint for taking her in and looking after her. somehow in the last week i've gone from being a month-to-month grifter with few ties to anything to a legally grounded human being with a dependent. nothing else has changed in order to make this an appropriate thing to have happen. interesting.

on a lighter note, i saw tom jones tonight. if you never have, i must insist you make this a part of your life very soon. before the show, i went to the dollar store and picked up a huge pair of red lacy panties, and OF COURSE i threw them on stage during "she's a lady." tom jones has stopped dyeing his hair and he looks kind of a fright, but his voice is actually still in pretty much perfect shape. he closed with "sex bomb" into "it's not unusual," and encored with "venus" (like um, bananarama style) followed by prince's "kiss." i just about died, and so did the white-haired ladies in the audience. when he closed the show, i counted twenty-seven items of underwear (panties, bras, one pair of boxer shorts), two sets of fuzzy dice (?) and one devil horn headband scattered around the stage. highly impressive.

perhaps what i need is to get out of new york city, and soon it will be so - only a few weeks until sxsw 2009. it looks like this year will be more intense than our maiden voyage, as there will be seven of us in one hotel room built for two and we do not fuck around. rumours abound of everything from sunflower tamales to a jane's addiction reunion show, so it should be good. looking forwards to the indoor pool, cheap whiskey, loud bands, hot people in tight pants, old friends and new adventures. also, sleep (eventually).

friends without benefits

i am the worst blogger ever. wish i could say i'm sorry. i'm not.

i posted this thing about my feelings re: he's just not that into you, and then i was like, really? is this what i'm blogging about? so i deleted it. hey guess what, i saw this movie that was a blip on the pop culture radar, i hated it, i knew i'd hate it, i never want to date a man or a woman ever again and now i'm going to crawl into a hole and die. nobody will ever marry you, jennifer aniston. hey scarlett johansson: from my rack to yours: nicely done!

how was your valentine's day? it was ben's birthday and elena's birthday and elena had a party and i built her a balloon arch. did you know i worked in a party store as a teenager? well i did; my aunt used to own this place in jersey and my brother and i both worked there. i'm a balloon specialist, albeit out of practice. i got a cramp in my right hand from blowing up so many balloons on the helium tank. when i was done, i wanted to unwind so i went out onto the trampoline that annie, elena and bri keep in their backyard. i didn't take my shoes off, and two jumps in i landed on bri and twisted my ankle and we both curled up into little balls there on the trampoline, wincing and fighting back tears. i'm pretty sure i sprained my ankle. she seems to be pretty much ok. i'm apparently all about whimsical injuries. the party was nice.

so i broke up (or whatever) with my friend-with-benefits of the last eight months or so last week.. it was something i had wanted to do for a while cos the whole thing had made me slightly insane from day one. still, eight months.. it's a long time to not be sure where you stand with someone. i hadn't mentioned it here cos it was a delicate situation, a person i am close friends with who was/is involved in a very longterm relationship with someone else - and it's not that i don't respect that, and actually i like her boyfriend very much, it just happened and then happened again and although i felt kind of/REALLY terrible about it, all the illicit and dangerous parts of it were the parts that made the whole thing so deliciously appealing. i'm not proud of myself, but it is what it is. i can easily promise that i won't do it again. i'm jewish; i have enough of my own unsolicited guilt. thanks though!

at the same time, i know myself, and i'm no good at this whole friends with benefits thing. eventually if i'm friends with the person i'm hooking up with and i care about them a lot, it becomes harder to separate the two. this was sweet and affectionate and comfortable.. until it wasn't. i've been around long enough to know that when my messed up heart starts thumping, that's a glaring red flag and i need to stop. so we stopped.

we finally talked about it, we're fine, we think we're smart enough and strong enough and adore each other enough to get through this part and still have fun together, but i'm still a little bummed.. i mean, now we're what, friends without benefits? i had obsessed and wondered and analyzed this relationship from every possible angle for months, and now when she texts me i know exactly what she means by everything. it's just... anticlimactic, really. in the last couple of hours, two darling friends have contacted me to bitch and moan about the women in their lives, and i understand; women are a mind-fuck and i can't do it again. my life would be a lot less complicated without girls in it, or boys for that matter, but this doesn't stop me from engaging in such ill-advised love affairs. anyway, i've told myself a thousand times that this was a terrible idea and that it needed to end, and now that it has i'm definitely relieved - i just need a little time to get over my precious, bruised little ego.

i've been here, it sucks, my heart isn't broken, it'll be fine, but i've been in sort of a haze since it happened. i wasn't in love, i just feel really stagnant now.

i broke up with that dude tonight, as i just wasn't feeling it. we didn't have much in common, beyond a mutual love of the muppets take manhattan. he took it well. he'd had a shitty day anyway. sorry dude.

then i came home and worked on a jigsaw puzzle of the eiffel tower. true story.

oh, i've been food blogging here. more on this project as it unfolds. have you had my chili? it's delicious.

the humming wires

OH MY GOD.
the internet's been out in my house for A MILLION YEARS.
or like three days? four days? i can't remember. i've been mostly in a puddle on the floor, twitching miserably. our building shares internet, i'm the only person who cares so uhh passionately about having it, and after a massive wild goose chase fiasco yesterday involving buying a router that cost $100+ and spending multiple hours trying to install it, only to be told 20 minutes into my conversation with non-english-speaking tech support that such an installation was impossible with our modem, i was pretty resigned to the fact that i was just going to KILL MYSELF.
but this morning my aim was logged in, all by itself! is this what christmas morning feels like?

anyway. technology. today i am moving into a new medium.

my friend elena bought an iphone a few days ago, and because she is a big important law student and i am but an insect, she hired me (read: fed me) to set it up, install music and applications on it, and learn how to use it so i might teach her when she had the time. i'm a loyal blackberry pearl owner, but i must admit this thing is pretty awesome. another friend of mine had bought one a few days prior, and told me about some of the weirder applications you can buy for it, which means i sought out immediately to find the most insane one possible... the ocarina. this is literally an application where you turn your iphone into a flute, and play it by blowing into the microphone while covering arbitrary finger holes, which you can adjust by modal scales!! music nerd heaven.

i like my phone, i love t mobile (hi t mobile!), but man, if my phone was a musical instrument, i'd be a happier person. here are some pictures of me preparing for my first ocarina recital; clearly this is SERIOUS BUSINESS. these pictures were taken with said musical instrument. my bass cannot take photographs.

here is the finished product:

this song was selected because it was easy and i knew it. i must add that this is only after an hour or so of practice - eventually i might get to be pretty good. some suggested i might make a decent living playing iphone songs in the subway.. i don't think i'd give money to some scumbag playing an iphone in the subway, as clearly they're doing just fine.. but perhaps you feel differently. regardless, i'm working my way up to learning 'hungry like the wolf,' and then perhaps eventually branching out into one-man band territory.

kids can be so cruel

i'm not sorry for the gap in posts.

however, i have a topic for you today! a topic for discussion. enjoy!

so this may surprise you, but i wasn't always the stylish wiseacre i am today.. i may have mentioned my stunning wardrobe collection circa sixth grade, which involved leggings or sweatpants and a lot of paisley turtlenecks and t-shirts with slogans like "life without horses would be a mistake." i didn't really brush my hair very often, and i daydreamed a lot and drew pictures of galloping steeds in the margins of my math notes. also, despite being a year younger than the other kids, i had developed the need to start wearing a bra in fifth grade - as if i needed to draw MORE attention to myself. all i really wanted was to write, ride horses, and be invisible in public. would you pick on me? i would; i just picked on myself right now. hot, i know.

without getting into a lot of self-deprecating, slightly embarrassing humor, let's just say i wasn't very cool, and everybody in my middle school agreed with me. as all the girls in my grade were probably experiencing the same pubescent horror i was, they took out a lot of their aggression on me, resulting in a lot of name-calling and weird accusations towards yours truly. this took its toll on my poor, still-developing psyche. seventh grade in particular was a very bleak year, the year i started wearing all black and embracing my inner alanis morissette. this eventually led to many visits to many therapists and the charming emotional trainwreck you all know and love today. had a great time, wouldn't change a thing.


the whole scene mellowed out in high school, as i came more into myself and cared less about fitting in, and the other kids cared less about each other in general, blah blah blah. the pack of girls who'd tortured me so relentlessly in middle school actually grew up to be (to put it kindly) cum dumpsters, and the gossip mills assured me that they'd all gotten knocked up or received a nasty case of herpes from godknows who. one chick became uhh, the only girl on the wrestling team.. the ringleader of the pack was pregnant by senior year, and her sidekick became such a prolific stoner that during eleventh grade chemistry she went so far as to dazedly apologize for having made my life a living hell in seventh grade, which i accepted. why the hell not? she even signed my yearbook, complimenting me earnestly on the rack she had tortured me for a few years prior. i hardly cared by that point.

anyway, the point of this story is that all of these bitches have since added me on facebook, as though we were old friends.

none of those bitches were named heather, fyi.

picture it: brooklyn, 2009. i'm staring at the friend request, thinking oh GOD, fuck HER, feeling exactly like that awkward 12-year-old who didn't know how to defend herself against such catty little bitches by the dugout in the softball field at gym class. at the same time though, man, i'm 25, and am i really carrying around grudges from middle school? the answer is obvs yes. what's THAT all about? why do they want to be friends with me? do they not remember what our relationship was like?

i accepted their friend requests though, and here's why.

firstly, they want to be friends with ME, which means i'm a lot cooler now than i was in seventh grade. that's reassuring.

secondly, i can spy on them and find out what kind of adults they turned into. the answer is not surprising, and i feel entirely justified in being judgemental. they all still live in or near the town we grew up in, and they have unremarkable jobs, ugly babies with pierced ears and guido boyfriends. they still hang out with one another at the mall and do mostly the same things they did in high school, only those things are legal now. the regina george of the crowd's little girl is now about nine, meaning she's almost old enough to start picking on unfortunate adolescent weirdos herself. the best news of all is that one the girls is tremendously fat and has a photo album entitled "APPLEBEE'S." it consists of.. well, pictures of her and a bunch of heavy, bearded guys hanging out at applebee's. the drugged-out girl went on to work in a hospital, which is kind of precious. i'm not saying i'm living the dream myself, but at least i've escaped the new jersey vortex, and that's something. i do not have a photo album documenting my thrilling visits to applebee's. this feels like a small victory.

if i could have told 12-year-old me that i would go on to lead an uneven but otherwise interesting rock'n'roll lifestyle filled with makeouts and whiskey, and these bitches would grow up to be fat, lame baby factories by 25, i probably would have held up a lot better in middle school, huh?

what IS facebook protocol for dealing with adolescent tormenters? i feel like this is a very generation-specific problem.

eat your heart up

it's snowing for the millionth time and i'm over it. i am so fucking done with winter.

so since my last blog, god, it's been ages. i'm gonna stream of consciousness for a little bit, and the shelf life of this post may not be very long. fair warning. blog blog blog. why do i blog? i appreciate those of you who encouraged me to keep this up.. but part of me worries. i've been very careful not to associate this blog with my last name or anything remotely identifiable (other than pictures and my actual first name), but i always worry about how freakin public and permanent the internet really is.. i think perhaps i'd appreciate it more if i could control who was able to read, but that is of course a livejournal and i vowed that i was done with livejournal a long time ago. i mostly am.

i got told off by my ex roommate for talking about her here, even in vague terms, so that's over. you wanna hear about it, speak to the big exit legal department.

what else is happening? uh, my friends and i ran into the rapper from sxsw a few weeks ago. he took us to a weird rich-dude cabaret club where the manager berated the door guys for letting jude law in and not escorting him to the proper vip area - "now jude law is just wandering around like a dickhead!" maybe you had to be there.. i thought it was hilarious. the rapper said he'd tell his (now ex-)girlfriend hi for me. awkwarddddd.

what else? um, i saw the raveonettes a few days ago - that was lovely. they're a wonderful band, very noisy, very danish, pretty harmonies, pretty guitars. the drummer wasn't as pretty as the one they had last time i saw them, but so it goes. i love sune's nerdy little guitar dances when he's playing inside a gigantic wall of distortion. lars ulrich from metallica was randomly there and we all wanted to punch him in the face, but didn't. the raveonettes though, they're a-ok as human beings, and not half bad to look at (which half? hey-o!).

the raveonettes. sharin foo is probs too pretty to be a real person.

i can't believe sharin just had a baby; she looks phenomenal. i went with one of my roommates, ashley, who is also platinum blonde with wide bangs and a figure made for vintage clothes, and kids were coming up to ashley all night and congratulating her on her set, which she took remarkably in stride. wanted to get a picture of ashley with sune, but failed as sune was very busy and being pulled in all directions.. ah well. the good news is, i saw a smattering of friends and got quite drunk for free.

that's been kind of the basis of my life the past few weeks - getting drunk for free, as often and as heavily as possible. the benefit of working in clubs is that you get to know a lot of bartenders, and bartenders work all sorts of places. january has been fairly bleak, and i've been trying (mostly successfully) to make the best of it.. still. i probably need a new hobby that isn't drinking. remember when i turned 25, like, a few weeks ago, and i was like 'yeah, man, this is it, i'm too old for this bullshit - time to quit all the irresponsibility'?? yeah, that worked out really well. mary told me she thinks you can do it til you're 27... at which point you probs die like kurt, jimi and janis.

about a week ago i was out at the bar, pounding whiskey with a few of the sound guys, and i met a woman who is maybe somehow connected with my company? maybe? i don't know. anyway, she asked about where i was working, and then asked what my OTHER gig is - like, most of the bartenders and door kids are photographers or actors or writers or something, and the night gig is just to pay the bills. i love and respect that, and often feel badly that i have nothing to show for it myself; i'm just working to try to get more work, really. i hardly consider my video game noises to count as actual musical ambition of any sort. anyway, this woman asked what my big passion was. a stranger in a bar actually asked me what my passion was... i had no answer. maybe i would have had an answer a few months or a few years ago, but right now i feel like it's been sucked straight out of me. i didn't know what to say. for all i know i told her my passion was jameson. oh, poor little me and my existential crisis.

the oddest thing to come out of january is that i have gone on a handful of adorable normal dates with an adorable normal boy i met on randomdatingsite. i don't want to talk about him too much because that doesn't seem fair... however, the entire idea of normal dating, like, dinner and a movie, hand holding in public, boy-girl total human being dating is COMPLETELY FOREIGN to me and i've found myself freaking out. should this go anywhere, and it looks like it has the potential to do so, i really need to get my act together, stop fucking around, quit enjoying this decadent and retarded lifestyle of mine, straighten up and be normal for once. i say this so often that it's almost lost its meaning, but i guess i'm really doubting my ability to handle something uncomplicated.

a paragraph like that makes me feel like such a fucking carrie bradshaw twat i can barely handle it. i can't come up with a painfully clever pun to close out a "i couldn't help but wonder.." sentence, but trust me, it's out there, and when i think of it you'll be the first to know.

anyway, heather and i made a vow that 2009 is the year we stay away from crazy bitches. after we made that vow, we remembered that we also made the exact same resolution to 2008, with very mixed results (one in particular..). strange then, that what i thought i wanted is also so profoundly terrifying.

i wonder if any of my old therapists miss me. i sure miss them.

fast as you can

have i really not posted yet in 2009? i'd better get on that.

it's the dead of winter and i'm in rare form. every year when it gets cold out, i shrink into my room (wherever it may be), lie in bed for hours and listen to depressing music like it's going out of style. i only go out when it's dark, so i get a great head start on my summer pallor, and i want to eat absolutely everything all the time. work is very very very slow in the winter and i haven't needed to be anywhere special in about a week. in short, i'm so fucking seasonally depressed that it's irritating to even me, and now in addition to all these annoying symptoms, i'm not sleeping. this is highly annoying, as i can usually count on anywhere between 10-16 hours of sleep most winters when i can get away with it. this year, however, i'm up til 5:30 or 6 most nights, and i wake up in the late morning when my bartender roommates start shuffling around in the kitchen.

what am i doing at 5:30 am? i'm watching like, rock of love bus like the intelligent, worldy, educated woman i am and thinking about things i could eliminate from my life so i could lie alone in my coccoon forever. the other night i deleted my tumblr, which nobody cared about. i considered deleting this blog, and may still, but i can't tell if it's my seasonal bitchiness talking or a real and honest desire to stop speaking publicly about my life. anyway, i start working again tomorrow and things pick up shortly afterwards. spring can't come soon enough.

i'm a cheery bastard right about now, filled with positive thoughts about my past, present and future (not really). in an effort to remedy this, i've signed up for some godforesaken online dating site, thinking that perhaps if i met new people and forced myself to go out and do things that i'd have increased energy for everyday things. this may be so, but thus far i am frightened of any responses i've received and instead have been even further convinced that everybody out there is scary and the world is terrible and it's safe here in my little room, just me and hulu and bat for lashes and coconut tea.

anyway, weirdos, you don't want to take me out anyway (if you're reading this blog, odds are good you already know that). a while ago ms mercury from word verification did a list of reasons nobody should date her, and a long time ago riese did the same, and i always thought it was a cute idea cos the reasons listed were so endearing that it seemed to have the opposite effect on the reader. i thought i'd give it a try myself, and i competitively and obstinately believe my list is more on point.

and without further ado..

reasons not to date me.

- i have no tact. i tell it like it is, and sometimes it's harsh, and i usually feel bad about it, but i can't keep it in. i will definitely hurt your feelings with a poorly-worded joke. sorry in advance.
- i dish it out but cannot take it. i take everything personally.
- i am going to correct your grammar without even thinking about it.
- i am prone to periodic obsessions with things you will think are terrible - a certain song, a certain television show, a specific meal from a specific restaurant. i will consume these things constantly for a period ranging anywhere from several days to a month, then become terribly sick of whatever it is.. then i'll move on. you probably won't be speaking to me by this point.
- i really truly actually genuinely love the spice girls and will not apologize for it.
- the hours i keep are truly bizarre. if you have a job, i'm not for you.
- i can be needy. like, really needy. i am pretty sure this has a lot to do with my choosing people who are emotionally unavailable ALL THE TIME, but i worry a lot, and need a lot of reassurance, which is tiresome for everybody. maybe if you are normal this won't happen, but if you're normal i probably won't be that into you.
- i eat a LOT. like, a lot. it's all i think about. i'm messy, i spill stuff, i don't know what forks to use, i never learned how to use a knife properly cos i don't eat meat and i don't care. god help you if you ever have to watch me eat a taco or a falafel or anything else i'm supposed to eat with my hands.
- i suspect that i tell the same stories over and over, and that i am actually a terribly boring person.
- i'm a little bit deaf in my left ear, and as a result (or as a convenient excuse) i don't like talking on the phone at ALL. good fuckin' luck.
- i don't feel comfortable dancing or being in large social situations without the comforts of either a close friend or a stiff drink, preferably both, never without the latter. all my good stories start with "i was wasted and..." because it's more convenient.
- i'm going to think all your flaws are terribly cute, especially the ones that are GLARING RED FLAGS to the rest of the universe.
- i've mentioned this before, but i need to be seated with my back to the wall and my eyes on the entrance of any restaurant we go to. if i don't have this seat, i will freak the fuck out throughout the entire meal. i will not be comfortable. i only make this compromise for my grandma. oh yeah -
- if you become a big part of my life, you have my grandmother to deal with. odds are good you're not jewish. she's not into that. odds are good you have tattoos or strange facial jewelry or an interesting haircut, and she will think you're scary and tell you so. sorry. she's never met anybody before because nobody is a big part of my life, because i am a destiny's child independent woman and nobody wants to put up with me.
- i'm already in a committed relationship with my blackberry.
- sometimes i will get depressed and self-defeated, and you will want to offer suggestions for things i could do to fix this situation. i will get condescending and list a thousand reasons why all your ideas will not work, and everything is useless, and we should all just kill ourselves.
- my friends are going to know everything you do or don't do, because i have many feelings that need to be addressed and picked over because i grew up reading girl magazines.
- additionally, six months or so after we break up, odds are good that i'll text you at 4am and refer to you as 'fatass.'

on the plus side, i'm a great cook with a sweet rack.

update: my lovely, sensitive and sophisticated friend riese has just sent me a package in the mail which will increase my ability to sleep peacefully tonight - all very legal and appropriate and befitting of a winner of a blog award, and in exchange i vowed to ask my readers to vote for her in this blog award thing. she's up for best lgbt blog, and you can vote once every 24 hours! seriously, her blog is pretty gay, so it deserves to win. i don't know any of those other blogs; i imagine they're also pretty gay, but hers is gay in a clear and heartfelt way. i mean like, jill sobule gay, not katy perry gay, although it occasionally wears cherry chapstick. what am i talking about? i need to sleep. vote for riese and her ethnic ass. it's what ani difranco would do.