obfuscated girl

editor's note

Linking to a poem about adulterous relationships a few days ago was not meant to imply that I am currently or have ever been half of an adulterous relationship or anything thank you. Never trust anything I say when I am that low. I don't really know why I'm clarifying this, except unless my future self reads this in 2015 after emerging from a heroic bout with amnesia and is horrified and thinks that I stole someone's mannnnnnnnnnnnn.
And now, Waiting For Valet.
Outside Hyde. A valet station.

Evening.
Paris, sitting on a low curb, is trying to take off her Jimmy Choo. She pulls at it with both hands, panting. She gives up, exhausted, tries again.
As before.
Enter Britney.
PARIS: (giving up, checking her Blackberry). So can't be done.
BRITNEY: Ain't that life? Blaming your pedi when your foot's the problem (advancing with half-drunken strides, sea legs unstable.) Totally. I've realized that too, you know? All my life, I swear, I've said to myself, Britney, be reasonable, you haven't tried everything. And I kept on struggling when the worst, most randomest shit kept happening. (She broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Paris.) So, like, you're stuck?
PARIS: Am I?
BRITNEY: I'm glad y'all hung around. I totally thought you were gone forever.
PARIS: Me too.
BRITNEY: Together again at last! Woo-hoo! We'll have to bust a jam on this shit! But how? (She reflects.) Get up so I can hug you.

and incidentally

Who in the sam hell does not know what mandate means. I would like to claw the eyes of the CW promotion department out with chili powder on the ends of my fingernails, drop American Heritage dictionaries on their toes, and then move to Siberia.

someone, something

This is one of those mornings where I have become convinced that the Entire World Is Out To Get Me. The weather for the past three days has felt like I am walking around inside a migraine. I left at the same time I usually do to get the bus, but it didn't stop because it was too full. When I finally did get on the bus I spent roughly half a mile beating myself up because I badly want to be one of those people who can have scintillating conversations with cute strangers but I can't because what if that is weird and I am never going to get over my people issues and will die alone and my carcass will be found in an alley being eaten by stray dogs don't ask me how I got into the alley in the first place because I don't know either. Upon getting off at the transfer point, there was a glut of fire trucks and police cars blocking the intersection which made me EVEN LATER for work. On top of all of this I am so tired that I can't see straight, despite having gone to bed at what I thought was a reasonable hour. All the terrible coffee in the world has done zip to wake me up. I'm actually kind of shocked that no one has asked me if I'm okay because for the past few weeks everything I've done and every day's existence feels like I have been replaced by a robot, like I am going through the motions of being alive and I'm not myself and I don't know how to crawl out from inside the bell jar.
(Other things I do not know: how to stop with the overdramatics. Or the self-absorption. O human condition.)
All this is reminding me of a conversation that I had a long time ago with a friend about how I secretly check the Missed Connections portion of Craigslist periodically to see if there is anyone out there who misses me. I want someone to miss me.

guess i'm doing fine

I survived this weekend. I came home tonight to a bottle of Shiraz that I forgot I had bought. I think this is a sign that Things Are Looking Up, or perhaps a sign that I should not purchase bottles of wine when I know I am going to be out of town for four days.
I have a sexy new cell phone that has a speakerphone component--apparently I have for real joined the 21st century because upon asking the sales guy "you're SURE it has a speakerphone?" he laughed at me for five minutes and then said "uh, most phones do now"-- and also it allows me to stay on the phone for periods longer than ten minutes without the battery squawking and shrieking at me and/or the entire thing shutting down. This is more exciting than any of you realize. I ate a lot of food and scanned a lot of pictures, all of which are grouped here, most of which are not actually crooked.

wherein we bout to get real pretentious

I found this on the internet, and not only has my collegiate minor in French been rendered so worth it because I am able to translate self-pitying livejournal entries perfectly, it pretty much sums up what this week, this month, this however-fucking-long-as-far-back-as-I-can-remember has been like for me.
tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge
se promènent dans la rue deux par deux
tous les garçons et les filles de mon âge
savent bien ce que c'est d'être heureux

et les yeux dans les yeux et la main dans la main
ils s'en vont amoureux sans peur du lendemain
oui mais moi, je vais seule par les rues, l'âme en peine
oui mais moi, je vais seule, car personne ne m'aime

further reading.
I am sick of feeling like everything is so close to the surface. I am sick of feeling like I might start crying if someone looks at me funny. I want to stop everything from changing so fast and stop feeling like everything is out of my control. I miss having crushes. I miss my friends who I call actually calling me back. I miss the me who was able to write about things without sounding like I am seventeen and hormonal and beginning every single sentence with "I." I wish there was someone who could teach me how to grow up and that the lessons would stick.

i warned y'all cornballs i hush puppies

So, uh, like

I agreed/volunteered to interview this guy for the place I write for yesterday.

And like, I am scared shitless, because I have not talked to celebrities on the phone before, like, ever. And I am scared of being the White Girl Who Understands Nothing About Hip Hop. I am scared of being Cindy on the Boondocks.
And yet: I love the Lupe album. I need to Get Practice if I am actually going to want to do anything for real with this writing thing ever. And yeah, I DO know more about hiphop than Cindy. If this comes through and I actually do this and I actually do it well (it was pointed out to me that as I will need some sort of recording device for my phone, ergo not only will I not be paid for what I write I will be PAYING FOR what I write), I will be 50 ways of astonished with myself.
Oh also: Lupe Fiasco--I Gotcha
right click, save as.
If anyone has any advice about how not to crap your pants while talking to someone even remotely talented or famous, please feel free to leave it here.

el fuego

Dear Rescue Me,
I love you for including the Twilight Singers on your soundtrack. I love you for giving me my cranky old man Denis Leary fix. I love pretty much all of your supporting cast even though they are dicks to each other and for some reason you can get away with this and Grey's Anatomy can't. I love that the most common insult that your characters hurl around at each other is "dirty Irish mick" or some variation thereof. I love--and here I mean "am shocked by" the fact that the dude who wrote Just Like Heaven is responsible for a lot of your writing and somehow it is not awful. However, the next time you intend one of your supporting characters to be dead for three days and have Denis Leary discover said character BEING LITERALLY EATEN BY HER CATS, please give me some advance warning to not be consuming any food while I am watching this happen, because I seriously for real just puked.

Thank you.

ps. I was just looking up Diane Farr, and it told me that Laura is in only 19 episodes. DO YOU KILL HER OFF, RESCUE ME? I HATE YOU NOW FORGET EVERYTHING I SAID OH GOD.

it is not my birthday, but i am 28

and I think I love this. Excerpt.
Self Portrait at 28--David Berman
I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.

It is a certain hill
the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"
and if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I'd call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn't mind dying
alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I am stuck
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

My childhood hasn't made good material either
mostly being a mulch of white minutes
with a few stand out moments,
popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer
a certain amount of pride at school
everytime they called it "our sun"
and playing football when the only play
was "go out long" are what stand out now.

If squeezed for more information
I can remember old clock radios
with flipping metal numbers
and an entree called Surf and Turf.

As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do
is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like
when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn
the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.

can't even focus on a coffee cup

And don't give me this shit about not wanting to exploit other living things. Everything exploits something else in order to survive. You can have some kind of I-don't-kill-things-and-I-don't-do-anal kind of philosophy about the whole thing, but cheese is fucking delicious. And you know it! Vegans are always crying about the things they choose not to have, as if it's being forced on them, like "I wish I could have a slice of pizza!"� What is this? Year three of the siege on Stalingrad? You actually can have a slice of pizza, you just choose to be an asshole. If I had a shitload of money I would charter a boat and send all of the vegans to Africa and make them explain to starving people why they can't have refined sugar. "Did you know they use bone char in the de-colorization process?! Isn't that gross?"� Oh man, and your fucking food! I love when vegans are like "you have to try this vegan cupcake, it's amazing,"� and then you try it and you're like "Now THAT is an awful cupcake! Like I'm not that big of a fan of cupcakes in the first place, but this is a surprisingly bad cupcake! Thanks!"� Or when vegans are like (this is true, this has been said to me) "I read somewhere that your sperm tastes better when you're a vegan,"� and I'm like, "Um, that's so not my problem I don't even know where to begin."�

This has been an interesting week.
My state is putting the gay marriage amendment in the constitution, and we are also interested in helping the United States to continue being the only industrialized nation besides Japan to have the death penalty, yet on all other counts we won we won we won. I know a lot of people who don't exactly know how to feel or what to think of ourselves. Yesterday it was 62 degrees outside and today there is snow. I am in denial that it is November and am considering asking if we can cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas and would someone just wake me up before this interview I think I am supposed to have next week because I need to sleep for the next five days thanks.

did you?

can you stand me on my feet

I have officially survived Week Two of the Name Will Not Be Named Because Of The Innocents And Also There Could Be Litigiousness I Mean Newsweek Doesn't Have Sixty Articles About The Dangers Of Blogging About One's Job Per Week For Their Health, Son dating agency. [Best story from this week: The woman who called and refused to further be matched with anyone unless they were Leos. She "gets along better" with Leos.] They let me go early today cause it was slow and I am wandering the streets again and feeling restless/homeless. It is too cold to really play outside. I don't want to go home and watch daytime TV. I don't want to read my library book because I don't like it but I also don't want to take out any new books until I finish it. etc.
Next Friday I am apparently going to go see this band at an um er uh gentleman's club. For all of my yelling about supportlocalmusic!! I don't do it as often as I'd like, plus which I have been scared of this band ever since I booked them when I was in school and recall watching their sets with a faint look of horror. However, I keep hearing they are getting better. And recently the drummer got two of his teeth smashed while playing or getting into a fight after drumming or fighting while drumming or something. How can you not admire that?
And now, the news: this site is approaching 16,000 hits. I have no idea who any of you people are or how you find this thing or why you would read this unless you are among those looking for bunny pictures or the Googling the phrase "fuck girl now" (confidential to you, sir or madam: you are gross). Also, I just checked, and as of October 28, this thing is THREE YEARS OLD. I am now scared of myself. Especially the myself who used to write exclusively in lowercase on page 46.
The exception to the rule of readers who I am afraid of is my sister. And Emily, please disregard the part where it says "gentleman's club" up there. Here we use "gentleman's club" as slang for "coffeehouse."