New words for the day, really.

• fraudster
• frugalista

The level of not okay...

It's all about the kitten.  Little Nevada came to live with Katie and I a few days ago, and, golly, she is adorable.  I have some trepidation about letting the rats out to play with her, she's kind of in a pouncy phase.

But her and the bunny seem to be getting along decently.  Lil Rhody knows he is, "one step up from grass" on the food chain, and so he scampers, he hops, and she quickly loses interest.

It's amazing how the internet has widened the cute cat picture phenomenon.  Understatement of century in 3, 2, 1...okay.  U cannot haz cheezbarger, Nevada.

I have been lulled into a peaceful domesticity.  Between kitten, bunny, rats, housework, and lovely girlfriend, there is a certain rose-colored dreaminess.  Of course, a retinue of pills keeps this functional.

I have been thinking about different types of blogging, while briefly thinking of joining twitter.  Honestly, I don't think I have that much to say in terms of tweets, I'm much more interested in following (admitted retardedness, here) Lindsey Lohan's twitter and Samantha Ronson's hi-jinx.

But blogging as storytelling - Stephen Van Dyck's hysterical accounts of adventures and shenanigans.  I do enjoy these.

Or blogging as mundane updates - looky-there, the gardener plucked out Katie's arugula plant.  Dammit, I wanted to eat that.  Is it facebook status plus?

So many times I just want to say - itty bitty kitty did something adorable, there, that's it.

Is it a desire to be noticed, to make a mark on the internet to say "I am alive!"?  I spend a lot of time indoors with the computer, procrastinating on the new book, because I don't quite know where to start.  I've been reading a lot of random articles, news and the like, this one about how to manage writers in the workplace was quite funny.

There was a blog I used to read obsessively called Behind the Neon, which was about strippers.  It satisfied this certain lurid voyeurism I have, in addition to just being funny.  One day it was deleted from the server, gone forever.  How do you mourn a blog that disappears into the ether...whether because the author had to get a non-sex-industry job, or... I'll never know.

This book, The Peep Diaries, is on my wishlist right now.  In terms of the realms of overshare, surveillance, the potential of the current technologies, etc...I'm curious.   When does overshare become legitimate announcement, or stray into self-promotion? How many of us are just shouting into the void, and how much of that is a reaction from a society that discourages face-to-face communication.

I'm all for facebook, in the way it brings people together.  It is a little creepy sometimes when I think of where all that information is/could be going.  Who is watching?  Does anyone have the time to monitor this hivemind?

It's Sunday evening, and I'm watching the bunny get introduced to the new kitten.  Adorable.


Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin / 730910-2155 is going to the printers, and should be out mid-November.

I am trying to get myself to write new material, while the kitten naps and katie does her homework.

Amazing, no?  Link courtesy of ama birch via fb.

For all that it's kind of one big ad for American Apparel, I found this article on the process cult pretty interesting.

And, entirely on the other end of the spectrum, this wall of fluff as well.

Today has certainly been a day.

First up: therapy. all seems well.

Then I went home and found that the air conditioner was broken, and it was 90 degrees in the dear little back house.  The rats were lying there panting out their little ratty lives, and it was a panicky inferno.

Walked to the end of the block...considered buying a bottle.  Walked back and worked in the front house.

Then...I discovered that my external hard drive, with all of my information, since I recently switched computers, was broken.   All my pictures, all my music, the novel drafts, the bits and pieces for the new one...gone.

At this point vodka seemed inevitable, and it was.

Now it's three in the morning and I'm watching the occasional cockroach, the moths and the ants, by golly, there is so much nature here.  Those cockroaches are incredibly fast.  The rats, luckily, survived the heat wave.

I am considering the possibility that my monitor and/or waffle maker brought the cockroaches from my old apartment.  I'm about to spray a circle of Raid around myself and keep typing.

Anyhow, on the good news end of things, Jet Set Desolate is now available on Amazon.  I'm tremendously happy about that.  The new Lamictal seems to be helping with my depression, and has an intense sedating effect that is rather convenient.  I have trouble sleeping.

Now to the endless to do list.

I'm dying my hair right now, the scalp stinging.  Black, of course.

Every few weeks I go on a frenetic mind-blast of paranoia.  Late nights hearing voices yammering about what I may and may have not done or seen or be or become.  The knawing cruelty of unpaid student loan debt.  The general tizzy.

I suppose today is the anniversary of 9-11.  Well.  Enough has been said on this topic.

More exciting anniversaries to come - October 3rd is me and Katie's anniversary.    October is the release date of the book.  October is Halloween, for which I am going to be Ashley, and Katie is going to be Farrah, from Rock of Love Bus/Charm School.

October is also my 33rd birthday - jumping jesus on a pogo stick.

Really, though, the level of potential surveillance through facebook - blogs - internet - support group websites - the mind boggles.  How little privacy we really have, or do you really want.  My therapy records could be subpoenaed if necessary...nothing very interesting, though. I suppose it all could be written off to the submergent purrings of potential schizophrenia.

This card is one I am considering for a tattoo.
There are so many to choose from, though, and I am so broke, that the likelihood of this happening is slim.

There is a bunny rabbit hopping around my feet, Katie is rousing in the other room, the ants are amassing on last night's dinner dishes, and all seems well for the morning.

I finished the riot grrl essay and am planning to send it out soon.  I must reread it.

The bunny is football-sized.

Today we played on the slip and slide. Here is a picture of me and my love.  We went to the beach in formal wear and ran helter skelter through the water.  It was fabulous fun until the Malibu sheriff came by and gave us citations for drinking on the beach.  I'm trying to drink less, we'll see.

It was hardly a criminal moment, though, and I think they felt a bit sheepish..

Either way, the beach in costumes is something else.

Bitterness aside, I am quite interested in other reconstitutions of the San Francisco experience. Jason Madary seems to be working on one, check Prim and Unproper for details.

At the moment I am working on an essay about Riot Grrl, and trying to get ideas together for a new book. Last night, dreaming under the mosquito netting beside my ladylove, I awoke from a dream about how this new book could shape together. It began with short pieces, molded into longer. Plot comes later, impressions and anecdotes come first. I am trying to cast myself back into the previous situations in which I began from scratch - began from turmoil, really, from messy personal situations. But there was always a short story or two that became the keys to the larger piece.

It's August, now, and I've spent the last month moving to a compound in Silverlake. We call it Waco. Intermittent internet access and many glorious changes: a slip n'slide in the grass, grass overrun into orange flowers and a lemon tree. I am very happy.

The problem of writing, the problem of writing again. I am going to try to use this blog to get myself to write again. Right before I moved...and it was a very sudden sort of "text message in the middle of the night about amazing property available" sort of thing. Right before this process began I was formulating an outline and thinking about a new project...another book, based on my paranoid delusions.

This might work, then again, it might be abandoned like so many other projects. Now that the major work of settling in is over, it might be worth a try.

Well, there is to be a wee delay. Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin / 730910-2155 is going to be released in Summer 2009 from valeveil.

I am terribly excited, they have done a wonderful job with it.

Lists! Lists! Insufferably compulsive lists!

I got this one from Miss K, who is sleeping angelically in the other room

A - Age: 32
B - Bed size: double extra-creaky, belonging to my dearly departed grandmother.
C - Chore you hate: cockroach slaying and dead cockroach picker-upping
D - Dog's name: no dog, only rats
E - Essential start your day item: pills!
F - Favorite color(s): black and red
G - Gold or Silver: Gold
H - Height: 5'4"
I - Instruments you play: keyboards now, formerly guitar, drums, piano, flute
J - Job title: writer, shiftless layabout, self-indulgent alcoholic, disabled veteran of the MFA riots of '08
K - Kid(s): not responsible enough to deal. Between rabies, scabies, or babies, I pick the second.
L - Living arrangements: two-bedroom in NoHo Arts District with awesome roommate
M - Mom's name: Ellen
N - Nicknames: Angie, Bunny, Wuzh
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: psych ward 2x
P - Pet Peeves: Costco, ativan withdrawals, having a PC from 2000 that can't do all the fun tricks, poverty, eggnog vomit
Q - Quote from a movie: "I kicked pills, booze, and the funny farm, I don't need anybody or anything." Patty Duke, Valley of the Dolls
R - Right or left handed: right
S - Siblings: sister in Portland, brother/cousin in Manhattan
T - Time you wake up: Anywhere from 5 to 9 am. I like writing in the early morning when it's quiet and there are no distractions. Distractions like list memes, which I suppose are up there with those facebook 25 things things in pointless narcissism.
"My narcissism is like an igloo, it warms me from the inside," Sarah Scott.
U - Underwear: On the floor at the moment.
V - Vegetable you dislike: rhubarb
W - Workout style: nonexistent
X - X-rays you've had: teeth, feet
Y - Yesterday's best moment: Christine Wertheim's reading
Z - Zoo favorite: oranguatangs

Several things, this morning. I'm waiting to go to the REDCAT MFA Writer's Showcase, followed by Mommy Mommy. Possibly between that we'll stop by Tucker Neel's art opening, or possibly Hot Dogs and Hats by Karaoke Fever.

It will all depend on how much can be done in a day, a day dominated by public transit.

But at the moment, drinking coffee and picking a blemish on my face, my dominant thought is - is 32 too old to wear a romper?

I have also been obsessed with sandals that come down like little spats.

I recently had the pleasure of attending Stephen van Dyck's thesis reading.

"A book-length conceptual writing project called "People I Met from the Internet," a detraumatizing, horizontalizing, decriticalizing of memories, spaces and otherness to sameness/"homoness."

In anecdotal footnotes, Stephen presented a coming out story similar to Joe Brainard's I Remember. The emergent list format, as popularized by the 25 Things, is a style whose parallel structures grants a certain equality to each phrase. The teen tryst in a New Mexico cave is aligned with each encounter thereafter, each with a story, each with the same detached yet ironic delivery.

I was intrigued by the way the text bloomed when read aloud. Having encountered the text in a previous draft, the horizontal legal paper and tiny font was a bit daunting. However, when read selections, the room exploded.

The introduction was by Matias Viegener, recently featured in Vice for Fallen Fruit.

There is this strange thing. This Ativan thing. Ativan and Lorazepam are the same thing, the latter is the generic name for it. Last summer's text, Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin, was dedicated I suppose to dating whores and benzodiazepines.

It will be a year now that I have been on and off this one. Prescribed to me, yes, by a psychiatrist who seems not to realize that the withdrawals can be fatal. Every month I have withdrawals, every month I go back on again.

But on a more cheerful note, I recently found out that Britney Spears is on Ativan. D-listed had this to say about her conservator double-dosing her to keep her sedated.

Somehow this is funny to me.

Into some blank time.
I want to remember the day.

The fan whirs, the ac flutters.
My nails grow long and sharp.

I'm up early revising a poem. problem at hand: translation. Does what seemed clever in Spanish and French work in plain bold English. Then to Swedish.

Cold water: the dark of morning

Two websites that have caught my eye recently are shrink rap and crazy meds. Both deal with the wide fun world of psychiatry: the former from the perspective of the professional, the latter from the consumer. Shrink rap has at times made me so angry I almost had a seizure at the computer. "How dare they! So this is what that bastard thinks when he ignores me and throws prescriptions." Crazy meds, while a bit web-design challenged (let he who is without sin, yes, true) has been quite helpful.

The interview with Prim and Unproper

I think that this article from the Huffington Post sums it up rather well.

Forgive student loan debt to stimulate the economy? Fantastic idea.

I'm sitting here on a day in late March. Realizing that so much is the boundary between the personal/private and professional. Since going on disability I have let myself be resoundingly unprofessional. Perhaps that is okay. Perhaps everything is okay.

I have been hypomanic lately, fairly gleeful at times, at the moment a little calmer. It's time for projects, rebuilding, drafting. It's a time when I realize that I need to write a new book, or a new writing project of some sort.

Free time management.

I'm doing an interview for Prim and Unproper, I'll put the link up when it comes out.

I'm up in the middle of the night, after a lovely evening with K. We made stuffed mushrooms and tried to fill the misery of Rock of Love Bus not being on the TV tonight, because of the Oscars.

This video is one of the cutest things I've seen lately.

I'm feeling good again.

It felt really good to unload all of that. The cockroaches, actually, have been absent this morning, perhaps the extermination effort did work.

I took the rats home today after, I'm so glad they're back with me. Getting that cage in the car was...a lot. But echoed by the amusing satisfaction of walking around carrying a giant cage of rats. There are exactly two.

I have been reading Vice's mental illness issue. Should have known this might be a mistake. What started out as funny and validating became, wow, I'm a circus animal to these bastard hipsters. Then I relaxed and realized...ah, silly me, it's Vice, a little is great and funny and all that, and too much and I get queasy.

I am tired, but somehow sleep is difficult.

The Group Home photos were especially depressing. There's something about...okay, where in the DSM-IV or where else does it say crazy people like collages? Is it just lazy caretaker art therapy? Sorry, no crayons for you!

And then the really annoying part about being in the psych ward and being told to make a collage is they won't give you scissors. Of course not, a pen is a big deal. It's all about wet and tear.

There's something validating about looking up bad tattoos and clown tattoos.

Is there something here about the desire to feel better than/worse than someone? Perhaps.

That felt really good. Really good. I was looking back over this and realized that a few entries ago I was on bliss farm. It's called Ativan. It's a great medication. Every month I run out of it, and the real weight (I can't bring myself to say weight of the world, It's the CalArts talking) I don't know, I crash really badly and hear voices for a bit and get really cranky. This time I accidentally took too many when I was going to my grandmother's funeral, which involved a lot of extended parent time, including a 10 hour car ride with them on the way back home.

Here's a few others for the list, it's really satisfying to complain right now, and I'm awake, so why not. These are more trivial. They are also less obvious. Wow, that's obvious.

1. Blogs with ads all over the sidebars.

2. The fact that my mental health office is so overwhelmed that they have 400 people and two psychiatrists, so I see him for 10 minutes every 2-4 months. During which time he throws pills at me (thanks!!!) and is notably absent if they backfire.

3. The fact that I'm so overwhelmed by living (and the clutter in my apartment, which is getting really gross) and a number of other things that it's immobilizing, and instead I pop pills and complain.

4. Lights going out in my apartment. Wow, it's darker. And I wonder why I can't/don't read books anymore and instead read internettery obsessively.

5. I was thinking about all of this overwhelmed feeling, my difficulty with cleaning or sometimes leaving my apartment, and traced some of it back to my parent's impossibly high expectations of me. From youth through high school, I excelled, gifted program, lala, straight As, won awards, driven, all that, blew it out early, and then I went to college and had a nervous breakdown. All that schizophrenia and bipolar in the family, that has popped up all over since, came bursting out. Now, a decade later, I've actually accomplished some of the big things I wanted to do, but somehow for them it's not enough.

My father's father (schizophrenic) used to sit him on his knee and say, "don't end up like me, get an education, get ahead in life." And so he'll sit down and check off how many children of our generation have doctorates. It was his big dream to have his daughters get married, have kids, get PhDs, have great jobs, etc.. etc...

Well, I'm never going to do those things. There would be absolutely no point to me getting in more student loan debt. I'm fundamentally unemployable. I don't play well in groups. The economy is in free-fall. I barely made it through my masters. I'm done.

Anyway, he projects onto me his wishes and expectations for the life he wanted me to have, and he's a good and kind man and all that, but...it's so unrealistic. My mother, too, she's great, but she has this whole idea for how I was supposed to turn out, and I didn't. And they love reminding me of how I'm failing.

Anyway, Ativan is great. It really helped me get through that car ride. Thinking about my parents expectations is really depressing. I should probably save it for therapy. But wait...I'm not in therapy.

For some reason I've had a lot of trouble getting myself to sit down and write. Anything. To the point that I feel ridiculous calling myself a writer. It feels so pretentious, really, but it's a nicer catch-all identity than eccentric deadbeat who has given up on life and needs a kick in the ass to... to... do any number of things. Finally today I sat down and made a list of things that had been bothering me that felt so obvious they were not recognizable to someone.

WTF???

1. Obviously...Scientology is a creepy cult! I went walking in Hollywood today, and, like anywhere else in LA, there was a giant, ridiculously opulent Scientology building.

2. O...hai, i'z in yr list.

3. Obviously...private student loans, I'm the wrong person to prop up your collapsing economy, I have a degenerative brain disorder. I'm mentally ill. I don't know where that money is going to come from. This one because I realize now that it's become my hobby, getting mouthy and overly personal with student loan people, namely those that call about the ridiculously desperate private loan I took out to go to CalArts. The federal people, bless-em, have this wonderful ability to defer endlessly, but this bank...wow, you only have a year's deferment...wow, I have to fill out a form that explains how it's all going to change in a year...I owe you ungodly thousands of dollars...DEGENERATIVE BRAIN DISORDER!!! It makes me feel like one of those lonely elderly people that get all excited when someone calls them, and then get all chatty with the telemarketers. It's in fact, very much the same. But, in a sense, I don't know what else to say. This brings up all these issues of making bipolar disorder my identity...my mother would say "leaning on it." But, then again, I'm on disability, I'm living on a very tight budget right now, and, really, I feel amazingly lucky that I still have my apartment, I will live on crackers to keep it, but, WTF CITIBANK???

Oh, by the way, thanks for the amazing education. I now plan to sit on it and let my brain turn to slush.

4. Obviously...website + rats (does not equal) small business. It used to be amusing when I got these sales calls. It's not anymore. No, I don't want to promote my small business. No, my employees don't need anything. They eat birdseed. Okay.

5. Obviously...guy that chased us off that mall-ish courtyard by the Kodak theatre today. No, I'm not impressed by you sticking your face in the fountain. Please stop chasing me. This sort of shenanigans makes me so glad that I'm the sort of orderly mentally ill person that does not harass strangers on the street. Take away my funding and the vault of pills...might get there. I love making idle threats to the internet.

6. Obviously...Seagrams has all the gross vodka flavors. Wild grape? Espresso? (this is sort of like caffeinated Cisco...danger) Blackberry? Is Nyquil far behind? Did you play tennis with the guy from Smirnoff and lose?

7. Obviously...Tegretol is not helpful. I'm not making foolish manic decisions, but it's yet another Faustian bargain, of taking it before I go to bed and waking up in cold sweats of four foot tall cockroaches chasing me as I vomit sardines and wake up in a sweater dress caked with my own feces, only to wake up again and realize...yes, this happens every time I take it before bed... Or, alternately, taking it in the midafternoon and feeling like I've been lobotomized and being socially retarded for the rest of the evening, only to realize, well, it's an anticonvulsant, so if I go off of it, I'll have seizures. Fantastic.

8. Obviously...cockroach problem is not eliminated.

Well, apparently the manic hysteria has gotten to new heights. Yesterday I had a dream about bleaching my hair blonde. well, as I have poor impulse control/it's cheaper than a tattoo/why the hell not...I did. It came out pretty well, it needs another bleaching, but I'm pretty pleased with it.

And also..K discovered this amazing link that I would like to share.

CORNIFY

This will make unicorns and rainbows, sparkly happy superfunicorns appear all over your computer. The internet's number one source for unicorns and rainbows!!!

I can die now!!!! It's just all so sparkly fun and full of blonde unicorns and..
(takes meds...sigh..um...okay)

Wow. I think someone had a little bit to drink last night. I think that someone would be me. Oh well. I am now very excited by this video-blogging thing. It's way more embarrassing than real blogging. The fact remains, though, that there needs to be content, and all of this silliness is kind of an excuse for real content.

I have been fiddling about with post labels and administrative whatnot. The endlessly self-referential navel-gaving belief that anyone reads this motivates me to say this. As far as I know, Jason M. and Katie J. read this, and no one else. Say hi, if you're out there.

I'm going to make a few more changes in the next few days, as soon as we put music on the Cherry Ames myspace. We are playing a show this Friday, and I am SO EXCITED.

What I really need to do is work on the new project, and work on resizing the images for the poetry book.

Question of the week...why do leggings wear out on the knees first?