Saturday, July 01, 2006

I have been very absent. I moved, now I'm moving again in a couple months to go to CalArts. I am finally getting out of here, I am so excited! This is really going to be fun.

I actually am living in a garret with a twin bed, actually. :)

Monday, February 27, 2006

this is actually just a test, sorry for the confusion, we are having technical difficulties

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Portland, I miss you!

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Two days after valentine's day, after the tearless acceptance of office "secret valentine" trinkets had safely passed, I though I had survived. It was the slow and subtle approach, the "wait until she thinks she's in the clear and lets her guard down" approach - that frosting of self-loathing on the good old cupcake of, well cupcakitude.

I don't know, it's a cupcake. When I think of cupcakes I think of snot-faced drooly toddlers smearing said frosting all over themselves. No, I do not like children. No, I did not especially enjoy my childhood, unless I was in complete isolation with a battalion of fairy dolls. They would stage elaborate invasions and torture the barbies, and thus I passed my life until I was able to move away and have sex.

With that said, have you seen those Bratz dolls they have nowadays? Lordy Lordy. When I was a wee tot we had to cut the Barbie's hair into mowhawks ourselves, and stick pins into their foreheads to show the anger of the forest creatures (stuffed animals), yet it was DIY. We were creating the violence in a world of sweetness and light. These Bratz dolls, they are little sluts! They have plaid schoolgirl kilts and thigh-highs and razored bangs, red lipstick, DJ boyfriend dolls with little plastic records and plastic sideburns - they even have a Bratz limosine that they "party" in. That's what it said on the box. I think I know what partying in the back of a limosine entails, and it's not something that you want your eight-year old to be part of.

Well, perhaps its good to give these little demons some idea of what the world is really about. If there are princesses (and there are), they don't cooperate in song and they don't always get what they dream of (although they will cut ahead of you in the elevator). Perhaps little Susie, after hours spent practicing with her DJ Matteo playset, will finally figure out how to get him to stop sleeping with 19-year-olds and...no, it'll never happen. Get yourself some Legos.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

1957 Smirnoff Vodka Pinnacle Decanter Print Ad (12386)Tonight I was going to go to Cafe Bassam and attempt to be approachable through careful wielding of mid-drift and manuscript, but instead I lost my nerve and am home, with some vanilla smirnoff trying to deal. Shyness is an intense propensity - when one has been steeped in it for so long, it becomes harder and harder to go out. It is just so easy to stay here where I am comfortable and safe and can listen to music and write and curl up in my pedicure chair with a down comforter and generally veg.

I mean, really, I work all day, I wake up at 7:30 and go to a non-profit where they pay me nothing and I research customs regulations and why someone lost a package of "The L Word" dvds they were trying to ship to our field office in Honduras. WTF? You can't track the USPS! I don't know what happened to your goddam dvds, I mean, if I'd had the presence of mind to FedEx them this wouldn't have happened, but I'm told to cut corners and be cheap so we can feed more babies in Ethiopia, so I sent it priority mail and they completely vanished off the face of this earth. I'm sorry. Stop calling me about it, I need to get my eyebrows done. And, no, I don't know if the hotel in Malawi has a view.

Anyway. Sorry, work stories are boring. So I'm stressed out, the same as everyone else in this world that hates their job and feels trapped. I applied to a million grad schools (well, 7, it felt interminable) this winter, and hopefully one of them will rescue me and take me off to a place where I just have to produce vivacious text about my sordid life and live in a garret with a twin bed somewhere...

I need to get out of here...

Saturday, February 04, 2006

So, I just put up some new links, some writing done for a now-defunct (and sadly mourned website called www.limetea.net. Edited by the delightful and vivacious Marty Smith: www.martysmith.com

We Can Do It! (Rosie the Riveter) Specialty Prints Poster Print by J. Howard Miller, 24x36I would've put up the erotica just for pure humor value - yes, we all need to make money, too, I was unemployed in San Francisco, I took a job writing for www.warhookers.com (don't bother, it's down) for $.20 a word, and that paid my rent for a bit. It was a facinating experience, really, getting inside the human psyche in terms of what excites people and how to play upon that while maintaining a forthright post-feminist stance. Seriously, the site was based upon the concept of a sexier Rosie the Riveter, of "the space between slink and hostility, lovely and a slap."

The last one is a club review from ages ago, back in 2000 when I had first moved to San Francisco and was bumbling my way around doing club reviews when I had actually spent very little time in clubs at all. It was an exciting introduction to the city, and I met all sort of disturbing characters and showed up to my temp jobs smelling of vodka, and all that. Much later the job would've been a snap.

Friday, February 03, 2006

A video artist named Mike Kelley once said, "I make art to give other people my problems."

Perils of Pauline (1914 Serial)This resonated intensely with me, as the book I am writing right now, Neon Hysteric, is so much a repository of pain, a sort of urbanite Perils of Pauline - Suzanne gets out of the psych ward only have her roommate fall ill, she - etc...

However, it is out of this abjection that I am trying to draw a parallel between Suzanne and her consensual sexual trauma and the hysterics of La Salpetriere in 1880s Paris. Under Dr. Charcot they were incarcerated and pathologized, much as Suzanne is in Chapter 11. Her breakdown is the result of her lover, Greg's, psychological torture.

The Makings of Dr. Charcot's Hysteria Shows: Research Through Performance (Studies in Theatre Arts, Vol 4)For further explanation of the historic precedent, see this article:
Hysterical Epilepsy, from "Iconographie De La Salpetriere" Giclee Poster Print by Albert Londe, 18x24
The female is driven to the madhouse, and as Charcot conducted public experiments on these women - a kind of Theatre of Hysteria - so Greg toys with Suzanne: manipulating her emotions, using her for a place to stay, and claiming her body.

I am now at the critical juncture when Suzanne has left the ward, and must decide what to do. Does she sever with her tormenter? But this may leave me out of a book, a book originally conceptualized as a love letter.

We shall see.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Here is a collage I made a few years ago.

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I tend to look down on this art form, seeing as appropriate for teenage girls, but the power of the zine is still lurking somewhere in the cerebral cortex, and that day I had to let it out. It's interesting to me that zines were the dominant creative form (in some subcultures, definitely mine), but as time passed, easier and more efficient methods dominated. Such as this. Or MySpace. I suppose there were fewer swingers wielding the tape, but it's really oh so much the same.

An old cover.

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Ah, youth. Etc...
There are so many ways to feel completely horrendous. I have the flu today, I am feeling nauseous, I am...(delves into list of ailments, all too peculiar and disgusting.) So I'm sitting here trying to appear somehow interesting...okay, take a deep breath, that's enough.

Take two. Okay. Water. Water is a good thing. Manicures are a good thing. raindrops on roses and whispers on kittens...