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.

So, a bunch of odd yet funny things have happened lately.

First, I woke up the other morning to a cockroach in my ear. I don't know where it came from...my brain, the curtain, the sky? The ceiling? The pillow? Katie!! No, I don't know.

I screamed, and it went flying off into the ether, and threw the pillows around, and goodbye.

the other night I woke up to hear little children chanting

"Gang bang, go away, come again some other day"

Then some adult-type began shushing them. I'm not really sure if I imagined this, but I was in my between-dream awake state, waiting for the leg spasm that would send me back into dreamland.

Jonathan - Katie wanted me to add that you're funny. Yes, I agree.

And what else...I guess we're going camping soon.

Okay, the first rule in compulsive overshare is dreams.

The Sarah Palin mania (for all that I voted for obama) was triggered by a dream involving her and...ice cubes. Y'all can let your dirty mind work on that one.

However, I had an especially poignant dream last night, actually, two.

I dreamed that I had a pack of tarot cards and could make so much more sense of the world with their guidance.

This involved some hovering around my room with images from the major arcana blazing from my desk lamp and walls. (much like this Sprawl flyer)

Then I had this very sad dream about looking for a halloween costume in my grandmother's basement and mistakenly finding a dress worn by an young woman at Manzanar, the japanese internment camp which we recently visited. This was highly disturbing. For some reason I was compulsed to put it on, pale yellow with black trim, it fit perfectly, including the hat.


I started to cry.

I don't know if this is my fear of getting hospitalized on Friday, or the ache that comes from a poisonous reminder of human cruelty.

Just awoke from a horrible dream.

That I was a contestant in a reality TV show, aping grad school.

Nobody knows, the trouble I've seen. Actually, some do.

Is it possible to have post-traumatic stress disorder from one's education?

I am watching my friends go back to school. It is through a glass, darkly. I am too sick to go back to anything. It was a dream marked by pity. I am going on disability because I can't work, my degenerative brain condition has become overwhelming.

I tell the internet this. The internet listens.

I think this dream was triggered by the comedy show taping I went to last night. There was a joke, under the hot lights, a comedian in a shiny shirt said, "it's like, emo, you know, they used to say, "are you ready to rock?" Now it's "are you ready to blog?""

Well hells yeah, I'm ready. What else am I supposed to do at five in the morning?
And yes, I did get these skinny jeans at hot topic.

Emo jokes weren't the trouble, though.

For three hours we watched six back to back episodes of a comedy show that will remain nameless, E and I. It was fascinating, the huge cameras, the forced applause, the occasional zinger, the blonde lady who came out during breaks to shine the host's bald head.

I watched in the audience, with surprise, because I usually can't handle crowds. But we were all neatly pointed forwards, with the assumption that we didn't have to speak.

The trouble came halfway into the third episode. The large iced coffee that had been so delicious before the show made it's presence uncomfortably known, amidst a barrage of bed-wetting jokes. No, this isn't the story of how Andrea wet her pants on national tv, it's more like how I made a break for it.

I got up, and wobbled past the three people in my aisle, hopping awkwardly to the floor. The douche in charge darted up and said, "Hey, hey, you don't walk out on a Dick Blick taping. You just don't do that."

At this point I should have said something witty about irrigating my neighbors or something, but I hissed the actual reason and a nice "key grip" or whatever they're called walked me to the potty.

But somehow there was this hot wave of humiliation. This wasn't my job, I wasn't getting paid, like some of the audience, but I was screwing up drastic when all I had to do was sit and laugh. I had been panicking, watching the swerving spotlights, the yells of "applause, applause."

I leaned against the wall of the bathroom, nauseous, thinking, you let douchy mcdoucherkins over here shame you, you're a grown woman?

It is perhaps a segue from jr high, from high school, college, grad school. The concept of shame in the body, in what the body does, how it acts out, sweats, fucks, produces waste.

It's really not that big of a deal, I told myself. are we ready to blog? Godammit, yes.

I enjoyed the rest of the show quite a bit, and after E dropped me home, I cuddled with my boo and fell asleep.

It wasn't until night, and dreams. I dreamed that I was trapped on a reality tv show involving elements from the previous, my pervasive agoraphobia and mistrust of others (paranoia, yep yep yep), and gossip girl!

Woke up in a cold sweat. Are we ready to blog?

And how.

I'm engaged to the delightful Tod Jackson.

We haven't set a date, but I have had dreams of getting hitched in the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Wearing black, with gardenias.