Sunday, October 18, 2009

Watching the kitten spasmodically attack things.  I had the most fun last night, it was three Halloween parties in succession.  I wore the Ashley costume to the first one only, then switched to something a little more demure.

The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our NeighborsI finished Hal Niedzviecki's The Peep Diaries, and it really opened my eyes.  I spend a lot of time as it is with reality TV, blogging, facebook, and paranoia....spent some of last year thinking I was being watched by surveillance cameras and subject to near-constant verbal commentary.  By linking these elements together into a larger cultural zeitgeist, Niedzviecki both validated some of my suspicions about what was going on the the larger digital wonderland, and confirmed that the internet is watching us as much as we are watching it.

However, what I walked away with was a sense of empowerment.  My dear girlfriend had worried that I would become more paranoid after reading it, however I actually felt less.  The key factor here was clarification of surveillance.

After finishing the book somewhere near 6 am, and a restless sleep, Katie and I went to run errands.  Driving through Glendale, I realized that I could finally see the cameras.  This sounds more psychotic coming from an admitted mental patient, but bear with me.  We were driving through a series of car dealerships, and there would be a camera pointed at the goods.  I began to make a hobby out of looking for the camera.  The bland black dome cameras, ubiquitous and subtle.  Once I began looking, they jumped out.  In the makeup aisle at CVS, in the low-income pharmacy, next to a "smile, you're on camera" sign clumsily taped outside a jewelry store.

The recognition of what was being watched clarified to me what wasn't.  It was seeing the eye.  "The eye of god," as K's tattoo artist put it.  Previously I didn't know what the camera's looked like, so they could be everywhere and nowhere.  An old boyfriend used to talk about "spycameras" looking into our bedroom windows through the blinds, and old women selling the tapes by the Powell Station Bart, along with feather earrings and bootleg DVDs.  I suspected and well knew that was psychosis.

The blurry space of psychosis and paranoia, the disconnect of what is perceived and what is believed.  I've had many conversations where I posited that "the ads on the internet change according to what I post in my blog/status update/search for on google" or "the neighbors are watching me and talking about me".  I now know the former is true. The latter, who cares.

Once I knew where I was being observed and where I was not.  I felt a lot more comfortable.  I felt validated, but also safer.  Because I can control what I put into the internet datastream, and then step back and do whatever I want in my home, safe in the knowledge that I know what commercial surveillance cameras look like, and they are not in here.

Jet Set DesolateThis also relates to what I put into my writing.  Jet Set Desolate just came out, and my dear family is reading it.  As are housemates, friends, and strangers.  This is both the culmination of a dream and eerily disconcerting.  Once information, stories, secrets become public domain, once the book is on Amazon tagged with mental illness, homosexuality, drugs, etc..., I am outed.  This reveal is both more and less calculated than whatever I overshare elsewhere.

By cloaking the story in fiction, and indeed, some of it is...the novel becomes a separate object.  It is not my diary. However, it is a lurid glimpse into a world now past.  It is a camera into so many secrets.  It is both real and unreal.  It is not the truth.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Dear Katie got a beautiful tattoo yesterday.

The Scarlet Letter
I am so floored by how perfect it came out.

She has been obsessed with The Scarlet Letter, and Hester Prynne as a heroine, for many years now.  She went to Broken Art Tattoo on Hyperion.  I went with her to hold her hand, and watch.  I love the buzz of the tattoo gun, and watching the different forms come together into a final, irrevocable whole.
So much has happened in the last few days.

First off, Louise doesn't have kitty cancer, just inflamed mammaries from nursing.  She's outside the door right now, spayed and doing a lot better.

The most exciting thing for me was the Washington Blvd Art Concert, on October 11th.





We arrived and set up around four. People came by bike, foot, and motorcycle, and we began.  Katie read two pieces from Vergangenheitsbewältigung, her zine.  I read from Jet Set Desolate.


I decided that morning to wear a very low-cut top, because I was interested in being conspicuously performative.  Performing a character in the text, not myself.  The selection I read was about Lena losing her virginity, and coming to terms with the implications many years later.

Noted: the interplay of gender and triangulation.
Two women reading.  Men watching. We each read twice.
Both selections told of uneasy straight relationships, closing.
Katie's three ended in two.  Ladies.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Manic in the morning

I wake up every day around 8.  7, even.  When it's light outside I charge.  But today I had four shots of espresso, plus the usual pills, and was unloading laundry at 9 am.  I'm trying to calm down, it's 10, Katie isn't even awake yet. I just took an Ativan to chillax a little bit.

I feel like walking around, like exploring, like using a lot of commas.  Nevada, the tiny kitty, is charging around with me.  Unfortunately, Louise, the mother cat, may have feline breast cancer.  She gave so much of herself with these kittens, and she finally got spayed, but her health hasn't been good for awhile.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

The mocha buttercream cupcakes of wonderfulness are finally gone, and can no longer torment me.

Instead, today I took little Louise to the vet, where she is now getting spayed.  Or is recovering from her spay...or face down in a pile of chihuahuas and kitty tranqs.  Either way, Stephen is picking her up tomorrow and hopefully she can get back to her active life of mewling, taking power dumps in Rob's bathtub, and being the worst mom cat ever.

This afternoon I went looking for Halloween costume stuff.  I am going to be Ashley from Rock of Love Bus.  While I am neither blond or busty, this all can be remedied.  My unhealthy obsession with this show, and subsequent 51 Minds candy Daisy of Love, Charm School, Megan wants a Millionaire and even, now, Real Chance at Love...  well.  I can't really explain it other than - boobs.  Boobs and booze and catfights.  I love this stuff.

Ashley started out being the character I hated, and by the end she was funny funny dyketastic.  So, I stuffed my bra with socks, pulled on some tiny short shorts, borrowed an Ed Hardy shirt from my roommate, and laced up some platform heels.  The look was not complete.

It was time for sexy socks.  Then I ended up at Rite Aid where I found a cheap blonde wig.  It seemed to be coming together.

I spiked my way over the the male gays to get a verdict.  Stephen said, "wow!  some people really dress like that, they'll think you're for real. Shouldn't you stuff your bra?"

Baby, I am stuffing my bra.

Monday, October 05, 2009

coffee or cupcake.  coffee or cupcake.  this is the 100th post for neon and concrete, and all i can think abut is the cupcakes in the fridge, of which I've already had two today.  Buttercream capucchino icing...dense moist chocolatey goodness.  Even with the lamictal controlling my weight, it's a tough call.  I think I really should just control myself and have a cup of coffee instead.

Now i know why housewives sit around and watch soap operas and eat bon-bons - because it's fun, dammit! I've been watching the soup with a kitten in my lap.  Now the other kitty, miss louise, is pregnant again.  She is due for a combined spaying-kitty abortion fairly soon.  Louise is Nevada's mother, and she comes meowing and wailing around our house when let out of the big house.  Dear Uise, I hope you get those wild ovaries tended to.
This post used to contain a playlist, but thanks to the music blogocide of 2010, I've taken it down.  bye bye birdie.

Sunday, October 04, 2009

poverty is not a moral failing.

I am trying to tell myself this.

My phone is about to be shut off, and I am about to default on my student loans.

I just saw Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A love story."

Very thought-provoking.  Perhaps a little heavy handed, but, really, as the film wore on I was shocked by how calculated the whole financial apparatus was.  Citibank owns my student loans.  My minimum payment is something to the tune of $4,000.  That's really interesting.

Anyway. I probably shouldn't whine about my financial woes on the internet, I suppose that's tacky.  I am lucky enough to have a roof over my head and all that.  I can't say I was ever a capitalist, but by this point, I'm definitely a socialist.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

 

So I had an amazing birthday.  A bunch of lovely people came, we ate Katie's delicious tiramisu (and Eric's cupcakes) I drank for the first time in a week, and everyone seemed to have a good time.  We tried to play Apples to Apples and that celebrity charades game, but it was a little too chaotic.

Apples to Apples Party Box - The Game of Hilarious Comparisons
For some reason I woke up the next morning around 7-ish.  It's cold, finally, it's finally cold enough to wear sweater dresses (cuddle suits).

Friday, October 02, 2009

So, yesterday was my birthday.  Today is the party.  I awoke at 8:30 this morning, as I tend to do, I'm not sure why.  There is a knot of anxiety in my stomach - I hope it's fun, I hope people come.  It should be small, yet cute.

The anxiety is also due to stress about money, my former roommate is refusing to pay her share of the bills, so I have collections agencies calling me, and of course the student loan peeps.  My social security check is going to be late this month, and the motherfuckers at Wells Fargo won't let me advance any of it.  So I'm in the minus for however long, probably until the 14th.

Drag Me to HellThis is what I hate - sanctimonious bank clerks who act as if it's my moral failing that I'm overdrawn.  You try living off of a disability check and see how well you fare.  For some reason the female ones tend to take a more bitchy-self-righteous attitude.  Did anyone see Drag Me to Hell?  A blonde self-righteous bank clerk wrongs the wrong gypsy.  It was soooo satisfying.

I even looked into monetizing the blog, but then - realized I wouldn't make any real money at that.

Someone, I believe it was Stephen's dad, said something about banks robbing the customers.

Anyway, rant over.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

While I can't say how many people have died from excessive reading of Harry Potter, here is a list of people who have died from Lorazepam (Ativan).
Strangely I only know about famous peeps, as they don't release the lurid details of normal ODs to randoms like me.  But, of these three they each had a veritable pharmicopia of other things in their systems, not just this delicious white pill.

This revelation has led me to try and quit drinking, which is working out reasonably well.  Thanks, lamictal, for making my attempts at social drinking end up with me still sober and headachy, and everyone else loopy loos.

  However, today is my birthday - I'm 33, whee!  Jesus died at 33.  I certainly will not.  I'm feeling pretty good for a no-longer spring chicken.  I remember freaking out when I left my teens.  My thirtieth birthday was such fun, glossed over by calartiness, that I wasn't too upset.  However, today I'm facing adulthood full square in the face.  Yipes.

It's cool, though, really.  I'm enjoying where I'm at right now, if only I could kick the writer's block that steps in front of me, like a fierce Tyra Banks, and says, "what, you're thinking about writing?  how could you, you have nothing good to say!"  So then I blog about my personal life, and everything's ok until the next time I get the urge to write another novel, which I really want/need to do.

But the question, as ever, is what to write it about?  I could just do short pieces until something jells, I suppose?  I recently lost all the data in my external hard drive, I dropped the damn thing....urrrgh.  So unless I retype a bunch of shit, the old fragments I might have cannibalized are gone gone gone.  This makes it seem even weirder.  I looked back on the folder of stuff I'd printed out the last time I got all charged up, and so much of it was shite.

But in other news, I'm going to be reading in "A Day in LA: Washington Blvd Art Concert", on October 11th.  Katie and Omar and I just went driving through Culver City in search of the perfect spot(s) for our readings.  I found a great big blue-poles and glass building called, "Imperial & Wholesale Electric Supply."  It's right next to the river and the intersection of Washington Blvd and La Cienega.  I'll be there from 4:30 - 5:00 pm, with the reading starting at 4:45 pm.

I'm really excited about this.  I haven't read out in public since the Next Words reading when I graduated from CalArts, and that was at least a year ago.  Possibly two.  Time gets weird for me, y'know.

But Katie found an amazing spot, it's an old broken down church.  This spot is so cool that Katie has people asking to share it with her...I think the answer is no.  Katie Katie Katie my lovely girlfriend, yay for her, she's also started a blog, finally seduced by the blogger application.  It's called Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, which means the struggle to come to terms with the past.  That's also the name of her zine, which she will be handing out at this here church around 3:30 pm.

I'm sitting here waiting for darling K to come home from school, defrosting the birthday steaks, drinking coffee that is probably a bad idea.  Oh well, It's my birthday, dammit.