Good news, today. I just heard from Jacquelyn, that Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin is going to be released in Stockholm and the US this winter. I am terribly excited. It will be under a different cover I think, but here is the old one.

The chapbook was put together out of my zinemakers urge, for some sort of post-school expression, and I'm thrilled that it was found interesting by others. Their new website is here.

My roommate and I were manically bouncing around the room this morning, she's writing new material for her thesis. I am trying to get back into that state, of production, of will. The internet can become such a time-suck...I'm trying to spend less time on it and more working, but the Jet Set Desolate manuscript is at a difficult point right now. It is the problem of perspective...when Brady is present, and Lena is not. Some of these moments can be easily fixed by putting Lena in the room in a passive state, but other situations are more difficult.

Blogging is a really wonderful way to procrastinate. This is what my desk looks like right now. The mug has coffee in it. I am hoping that the coffee will help me edit the manuscript. The abilify is helping, too.

The Octopus woodcut is by Omar Routher. Dear Oms.


I have been in a sort of foggy, swoony mood all day. Little sleep, strange dreams.

Not cohering, trying to work, failing, drifting.

I'll just go stare at the rats for awhile.
*skuttle...scamper*

It's Saturday morning, and I'm reading Elizabeth Wurtzel.

This book is so, so funny to me right now. Her grandiose self-absorption, her delusions and manic riffs. It is perhaps not acceptable to say that bipolar disorder and addiction are comic topics...but I've been there, so somehow it's real..though, of course, didn't have her resources.

Human dread, raised to the next level...yes. And somehow, because she is so ridiculous, when she gets arrested and panics about not getting to take her Ritalin and read a magazine in the cell...it becomes divine. Because, really, I would be terrified, too, especially if denied my medication for a prolonged period of time. Seizures are not cute, nor are they pleasant.

Reviews of this book

It gets a bit annoying after a point, by about page 125...yes, that's the point I'm at now. But, hey.

"Boners are uncomfortable, unless you can do something about it. Otherwise, you just want it to go away. "

Quoth the boyfriend, nevermore.

Here are my responses to the cheeesetoast omnivore's 100...foodie funtime from my dear cousin's blog.

So, this is what I have (green) and haven't tried. Red is what I absolutely won't eat.

1. Venison - somehow escaped Reno without trying this one
2. Nettle tea - not a big tea drinker
3. Huevos rancheros - yum yum yum, where's the chilaquiles?
4. Steak tartare - I've seen people eat it in Ethiopian restaurants, but never been bold enough.
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding - eh?
7. Cheese fondue - delish and so fun
8. Carp - what my mother does.
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush - touched by the eggplant gods
11. Calamari - love it, great with garlic aioli from cha cha cha
12. Pho - occasionally, like the fish balls.
13. PB&J sandwich - boring, but comfy
14. Aloo Gobi - from those instant indian foil packets...yum.
15. Hot dog from a street cart - all wrapped in bacon...not yet, have to wait for a hungry night.
16. Epoisses - ?
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine (not from grapes) - drinking framboise at cafe du nord with my old friend K..
19. Steamed pork buns - pork bao, had these for lunch last week.
20. Pistachio ice cream - from scoops, these combos are fantastic. Pistachio-rosewater-honey-lavender-poppyseed-lemon...omg!
21. Heirloom tomatoes -
22. Fresh wild berries– oh, joy!
23. Foie gras -
24. Rice and beans - a staple, next to some enchiladas or chile rellenos.
25. Brawn or head cheese - never had the pleasure.
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper -
27. Dulce de leche - whether ice cream or cake, it's great.
28. Oysters - love love, will eat raw, steamed, even tinned if I'm desperate for fish o'clock.
29. Baklava - oh, succulent honey.
30. Bagna cauda - not sure what this is.
31. Wasabi peas - so addictive until your sinuses blow out.
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl - the CalArts cafeteria does this unexpectedly well.
33. Salted lassi - mango, great, haven't had salty.
34. Sauerkraut - oh yeah. With reubens, sausages, even plop by itself.
35. Root beer float - these don't do that much for me.
36. Cognac with a fat cigar - Cognac's swoony, but cigars, blech.
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O - oh, but of course.
39. Gumbo - had it in Massachussets, I think. Or was that Jambalaya?
40. Oxtail - at this Filipino place in Valencia...tasty. I especially liked picking out the savory little meaty bits.
41. Curried goat - I would love to try this, curry anything is wonderwall for me
42. Whole insect - No no no.
43. Phaal - Not sure what this is.
44. Goat’s milk - how about goat cheese?
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more - my glass is waiting...anticipating...
46. Fugu - que?
47. Chicken Tikka Masala - craving has increased, thanks Lolo!
48. Eel - sushi fun
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - donuts make me hyper-crash-barf, not a fan.
50. Sea urchin - my favorite sushi, just melts like ocean.
51. Prickly pear - nopales cactus in tacos.
52. Umeboshi - japanese sour plum...great in sushi, as well.
53. Abalone
54. Paneer - anyway, anyday, spinach puree will save the day.
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal - yuck, yuck, and yuck. I'll stick with the ramen.
56. Spaetzle - sort of bland, texture like a brain.
57. Dirty gin martini - yes, please. Green olives remind me of grandpa.
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips - Mom was always pushing these...they're alright, but they're not chocolate.
61. S’mores - really, not into it. The marshmellow always gets burnt, and some little kid spits on it to put it out, and then they expect auntie angie to eat it - nope.
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst - is this a sausage?
65. Durian - isn't this Beyonce's little girls clothing line? The one with the high heels? I would not eat that.
66. Frogs’ legs - I would, if I ever came accross one on a menu.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - yes, yes, yes, and no.
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain - this is one of my favorite foods ever, I'm having it at the wedding if I can.
70. Chitterlings or andouillette -
71. Gazpacho - I make this from scratch, and it is amazing. Kind of like a big bloody mary sans vodka.
72. Caviar and blini - tried once, yes, then my hand got sliced open with the champagne bottle when the limo swerved. Oh, San Francisco.
73. Louche absinthe - Got my Mark Ryden bunny tattoo the night a friend imported this from Prague. We made martinis...but I never saw the green fairy.
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill - I'm with Lolo, here. Do not want.
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - just seems gross
78. Snail - under the right circumstances...i.e., garlic, wine sauce, I would eat this and like it.
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini - Very curious, would like to try.
81. Tom yum - kha or gai, best cold cure. I love crushing the lemon grass with my teeth.
82. Eggs Benedict - nice.
83. Pocky - ever try men's pocky. I gave my cousin this one year.
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare - the littlest bunny? oh, shucks. Sounds kind of tasty in a stew, tho.
87. Goulash
88. Flowers - I like to nibble rose petals as I walk around.
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab - yum
93. Rose harissa - ?
94. Catfish - had at the Delta in Portland
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox - lovely, also done well by the CalArts cafeteria.
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta - kind of overrated, or maybe I'm cooking it wrong.
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake - scared of these critters.

So, that's more than you ever wanted to know about my tastes.

So here are some things I'm happy about today:

My necklace arrived from modcloth.

It's an octopus.

And my little ratty is getting bigger and bigger.
Her name is Liza...or Little Squishy.

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.

There's something so endearing about the iconography of the 1890s.

the stereopticon, for example.

Absinthe, to my experience, is overrated...though past recipes were likely more potent.

This is one of my favorite old record finds...not exactly how I recall the Tenderloin, but again, the gloss of musicals, of singing whores and vice squads. It's about the Tenderloin of New York, reimagined by Robert Griffith.

The beautiful fakery of the stage.

Wake up - pills
Go to sleep - more pills

Absence and presence. Preiscence. Premonitions.

Seratonin Sangria Santeria.

I go to sleep, and dream of sick rats, dirty, squabbling, dying. I wake up at 8:30 and they are sweet blue furballs, round in their shoebox.

Video killed the radio star
Internet killed the zine.

But what's going to off the internet?

I remember making zines, feeling there was an evil creeping voicelessness of being a teenage girl. Now there are avenues of expression, so many.

My glasses lost, I cannot keep up.

It's time for lists.

Books I am in the middle of reading:

• More, Now, Again, Elizabeth Wurtzel
• The Virgin of Flames, Chris Abani
• Starting from Scratch, Rita Mae Brown
• Bloom, Fall 2005

What is secret and what is exposed, what is kept and what is discarded.

I live in Los Angeles, with its dance between public exposure, dense cult secrecy, and willful exploitation. I like it here.

Pop culture moment. We're watching Moulin Rouge, and what started as fascination is turning into disgust. Such beautiful costumes, sets, it would be delightful if they actually stuck to authentic gay nineties music. The 1890s, preferably.

Where is the accordion? This has probably been said a million times before...where are the automata, the harpsichord?


I have a fondness of musicals, having forced friends to watch the Marian, Madam Librarian scene from the Music Man over and over.

They do tend to run a very careful line between sappiness, camp, and tears. Valley of the Dolls and Cabaret hit all those notes for me. Rent...the first time I saw it I cried and cried, but later it seemed an over-romanticized circus.



Because there is that division between what is real, and what is lived, and what is voyeuristic, and what is exploitative.

Admittedly, I had to leave Jon Wagner's Narrative Ethics class. My essay was called an ethical disaster...and I realized I was fundamentally an unethical writer. Drastically so.

I write from experience, from what I have known, seen, born witness to. It was sometimes bleak, and it was often cruel. There was no music, and the velvet curtains were vomit-smeared.

Survivors guilt. I am still alive. I'm sorry. I miss you, I miss the people I used to know. But I had to leave, I was dying. I was doing cocaine alone every night, I had herpes sores on my face, on my hands, and of course. I was being sexually exploited and I didn't care. I had a death wish, I knew I was going to die, and I wanted pleasure before the end.

Somehow, I didn't die. Somehow, I'm still alive. Somehow, it goes on.

Hooray for Tod! My boyfriend rescued Liza from under the bookcase last night, we are glad to have her back.

It's noon and I'm making coffee. Must wake up. School is starting for him and for my roommate this week. It feels strange that I am not going back, I miss it, in a way. But it's acceptable, I am amenable to a housewife role at the moment.

Now if my diploma could just arrive...it feels, in a sense, not final, not the closure I would like, until that damned piece of paper is in my grabby little hands.

I never got the Mistress of Fire Ants tattoo. Someday, perhaps.



That and the other... I am working on a new book. It's just in the notecard stage at the moment, the strands and scenes and phrases in little bits on the coffee table.

It's about LA, this time, scrambled from fragments of friends and past encounters and supposition of the what-if. It's eluding me right now...scattered, distractions...I should get back to it.

I'm sitting down to edit the Jet Set Desolate manuscript. So relieved that it's fall, the cool of evening after a deathly hot summer.

It's the relief after a fever has broken.

We went to Maxi Kim's reading at the Smell last night, for One Break, a Thousand Blows,  and it was excellent. Well-orchestrated performance, theoretical commentary, and heat so moist and dense I almost fainted into my pie. Tasty, tasty pie.

Curiousity is piqued, now, I'll have to order the book.

The next morning, dear Liza got out, so we have been turning things topsy turvy to find her. I'm pretty sure she's behind the bookcase.

It's August 31st, and I'm sitting here with Erica and Sarah, preparing, practicing, talking, revising.

Pros and Cons of dating a younger man. – i.e. Cougar-time!

Pro:

• He’s so hotter than hot hot that when you go to New York, everyone thinks you have crazy game.
• Sexxin, sexxin, sexxin.
• Holds you in his arms all night, and when you wake up he kisses you and says you’re soft and sweet and cute.
• Easily entertained.
• You can dress him up in your clothing and makeup, and he will get a boner.
• He calls you a million cute nicknames like bunny-tron, Angie, cute-pants.
• He can be convinced to go buy vodka at 6 am by the sole act of putting on a corset.
• Said corset guarantees total worship.
• He doesn’t mind red wings.
• He will do all the housework.
• He’s fun to get tattoos with, and will let you pick his out.
• He’s fun to do just about anything with, because he’s silly and playful, not jaded, so going to the grocery store becomes as fun as Disneyland.
• He’s fun to rent movies with, because he hasn’t seen all your favorites and thinks they sound cool.
• He doesn’t own much stuff, so when he moves in, it’s no big deal.
• When you buy him a shirt, he wears it every day until it falls off.
• Because his brain isn’t as drug-fried as yours, he can spell better.
• He will read the books you recommend


Cons:

• When you go out to eat, he orders a milkshake.
• He says “psyche!”
• He calls himself “Big-balls Jackson”.
• You always pick up the check.
• He says “ass-to-mouth”, “balls-deep” and “squawk-box” like he has Tourettes,
• He looks at porn twice a day, at least.
• He plays video games all day while you work on your thesis.
• He waves his dick around while you’re trying to write this list.
• Late on rent.
• You have to convince him to move from Doc Martins to Cowboy boots.
• He doesn’t have as much baggage as you, so is more likely to get jealous/weird.
• As, within his age range, it is still possible to bag a virgin, he’s a little freaked by your multiplicity of sexual partners.
• He still thinks that not bathing makes a political statement.

Oh god, the fun doesn't stop, does it?
it's called, I discovered that being in love and making fun of stupid pet tricks is way more amusing then being an angsty bitch.

et voila!







alright!

Well, old blog, it's been quite a bit of time, now.

It's January, I'm about to go back to school again for the second semester of my last year (woo!). I just got back from this house club, and I sitting around with my boyfriend making...yes...loldogs. And lolgays! Or more appropriately, loltods! There may even be some lolandreas. This is what happens when you come home from hollywood blvd. all happy and awake.

So, here they are.

It's another Monday night. A Monday that was a vacation weekend, in which I spent every night alone because I don't have a car and all of the fun parties in L.A. I know about, well, I had no ride and was too proud to ask.

Besides, it doesn't matter, I'm meant to spend my nights alone, anyway. It allows me more time to refine my writing, sewing, self-pity and hatred. I'll just sit here and recall all of my past failed relationships and write about them in my novel: Jet Set Desolate, or, 101 drug stories. Certainly seems like a good use of next semester to me.

Now, trying again. Trying again after a week of two workshops, which I would really not advise. The first, the novel seminar, was helpful and inspiring, the second was terrifying. I got called, "brilliantly evil" by my professor, citing, "the evil intelligence of the self-awareness of it's own irresponsibility," claiming it to be an, "ethical disaster." "What we all want to ask is, 'Did you mean it?'". I meant every word. It may be time for a student-teacher conference, or I can at least try to figure out if being deliberately provacative and confrontational is worth a high pass or not.

wtf???