13 October 2001
So.
I was having a nice evening down at Ye Olde Cafe playing Rummy with Jason when Brandon and Mikey show up, having hung out all day. We go two doors down to Angelina's Pizzeria for them to eat, and I get a phone call from work: Not because they need me to come in (Sean's already there), but because the band that they had to come in and play had a late bass player and they wanted B to fill in on the drums.
Of course he couldn't pass it up.
Well, the bass player showed up, late, and B didn't play until their second set. At first it was kinda funny being there, and watching old people dance and get waxed, but then after awhile people wanted to say hi to me, being that I'm the Owner's Daughter, and though it's cool that some people don't know who I am, there are some times (like this one) when I don't want to be introduced to 40-plus year-old guys who look at me like I'm just the bee's knees. I don't like that part of the job. I know I'm cute and all, but I don't like drunk dirty old men looking at me in any way like that. I don't. It makes me feel like they think I'm just an object.
Plus, sadly, I kept thinking of someone else. I wanted to escape.
But there was something kinda funny: The match of the One-Eyed Midget. I'm still not quite sure who won, though, Brandon on the left or Mikey on the right.
Let's post this first before I lose the code in some weird vortex kidnapping.
.the girl who is not very 11:45 PM
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I realized for the millionth time that I have to buy
High Fidelity on DVD. Every time I see it it just seems to feel more and more appropriate to my life.
Watch me sell five copies of this Beta Band CD. Watch me.
Actually, I've been getting people all converted to the church of
Matthew Good Band in the car. Somebody already shit themselves that I busted it out the other day-- apparently he thought he was the only person who'd heard of these guys. So I gotta say my favorite song is "Born to Kill." Just that break at the beginning when all the instruments come in... the first time I heard that I had to put the laser back on and go
what the fuck did I just miss? a la Eddie Murphy and James Brown.
Jump back, wanna kiss myself.
Jack Black's character said, "I wanna date a musician." John Cusack's character said, "I wanna live with a musician." And the first thing I said to the TV was,
no, you don't.But then I thought about it, and I do. I wanna sit down and talk about the creative process. I don't really get to do that very often, unless it's explaining plots of stories or where the ideas for poems come from. That's not really creative process. Not really. Those things are just the idea part. How it all got there is the creative part.
I'm forming a novel idea in my head about Dad, too. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with it, though. It might be based about what I've been writing here lately. Maybe.
The weather's been fantastic lately, but it's not going to be that way for very long. It's going to get cold, and that's the end of it. I hate the cold.
Though it makes a good excuse just to go up to someone you have a silly crush on and ask them to hug you.
.the girl who is not very 5:08 PM
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But still, next weekend. Out of town. I have to hit the beach, even for like 2 seconds driving by the ocean or something.
Okay. Bed now. Hopefully I won't have any dreams about people like I've been having lately-- really cuddly dreams, as opposed to the random sex dreams I've been known to have in the past.
(There's a famous one about me and 2Pac. Don't ask.)
.the girl who is not very 12:18 AM
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As I get here, on the "get some" playlist:
4. DJ Shadow\Midnight in a Perfect World
There's a story I started with this title, kinda based on the song. It's about lesbians. I'm not quite sure where I was going to go with the story, though, so it's sitting half-finished in a recently finished notebook.
Went out to see
some friends play at UNLV's homcoming shindig. Mass string carnage. Mass coldness. A little blood. A hot dog (or three between the little bit of us there).
Stopped by the cafe for a bit, got a reading from Bryant and a couple of other friends Tag Teamed in, and gave me a little more perspective on things that've been running in my head lately.
So I swtich playlists to the regular one and what comes on.
266. Portishead\Roads
Okay. So suicidal love songs are just what I need apparently.
I think I'm okay today. I got my
review in this morning, sweet as anything to write late last night while I was chatting nicely online.
There are some reviews I do and it's like honey. Other reviews it's like molasses. Others I do and it's like slamming into a brick wall on skates. I think this last one was a split between the last two.
Slowly I'm admitting to myself certain things. And in a way, admitting those things makes me feel more confident in myself. I'm not quite sure why.
Still a dork, though. Big 'ol dork.
.the girl who is not very 12:12 AM
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12 October 2001
Written yesterday.
lunch at sunset parkgot something inside here
past french fries & chicken mcnuggets
sitting in a tree's shade
she called me over, you know, said
come over here girl,
my leaves make pretty musicand this feels
for real this time
congealed paranoia & failures
creeping in from 5 minutes ago
I just wrote this 2 days ago,
2 pages back,
nothing between the lines but lies.
got a Dopey toy in my Happy Meal today
and it made me smile,
so did the knot coming out
in the straw wrapper
when I thought of you.
that's all the time now
ever since you made sense.
people like to tell me I'm sane,
and I like to tell them
I'm doing a great acting job so far.
got 'em all fooled into thinking
I deserve to be happy--
I even got my Self convinced,
at least, I think so.
she hasn't made up her mind yet.
one kiss
and all of a sudden it's like
some loopdy-loop
waitwhat'sgoingon
just one big run on
train wrecked into necking
or something
life should not be defined by hickies
dammit
not mine
the tree she says yes
this is you
being a girl
(or whatever that means)
the wind fixing your hair
and the shade the best hiding place
hiding from you
I don't know
another plane takes off
going anywhere I want to be
hold hands w/ whatever's left
of my demons
I miss them sometimes
I really do
they made sense then
I thought I did too
but that was a lie between lines.
You want fries with that?
.the girl who is not very 1:03 AM
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11 October 2001
This is good. I think.Stand up please. Now, take a good look down. Notice please, your feet and what they are standing on. Do you think you can manage to keep things this way over the weekend? It may prove harder than you expect. Two factors could encourage your pedal extremities to defy gravity. First, the sudden arrival of fresh information. You will find yourself needing to turn on a sixpence and head in a different (but rather attractive) direction. Second, pressure. A race. A competition. A row. The best way to win this is not to try too hard.
.the girl who is not very 11:54 PM
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Blarg.
I just finished a
CD review, due tomorrow. I could procrastinate no longer on the thing.
This week. It's been long. It shouldn't've been.
Today the crakhed girlfriend spent her day slumped over forward in her chair on the back patio, sleeping or passed out or I don't know what. Sean mentioned to me that the doctor said that Dad was missing more pills than he should've-- and I'm not the one taking them. I wonder... I mean, once you've done the heroin thing, everything else is just candy, right?
Post. Maybe more.
.the girl who is not very 11:45 PM
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I totally forgot what I was thinking about writing. I think that's an indication that I should just go and get some work done.
.the girl who is not very 2:15 PM
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10 October 2001
330. The Beatles\Norweigan Wood
I once had a girl\Or should I say, she once had me.Feels a little more apropo than I'd like right now, after
Chasing Amy. Actually, this song was one of the first ones I learned on guitar when I was seventeen. My brother gave me an old beat up guitar he had sitting in his closet, and when my Mom found out I'd started listening to the Beatles, she started buying Beatles t-shirts and got this huge Beatles guitar book for Christmas one year.
I'm a dork.
I knew I shoudn't've stayed home this evening when I came home to find the crackhed girlfriend frantic that she'd put on spaghetti sauce and the spaghetti she was going to make had been invaded by silverfish. That meant that I had to run to the store, a place I didn't really want to go. But I picked up some microwave popcorn for later, so that's good.
And I just found out one of my friends that I studied with overseas is getting married next Saturday. In L.A. The same day my brother's best friend is getting married. And I
really want to get out of town. Looks as if Barry's gonna have to go down the aisle without me sitting there. After seeing him this past weekend, he's a sweetheart and all, but the boy's a little... nevermind.
So now that I want to get some late coffee, my theme is:
101. Erasure\Oh L'Amour
.the girl who is not very 9:46 PM
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Today was nice. Went to the park to write. I wrote. A lot. Brandon came by since he'd taken a day off, asked if I wanted to go car hunting. Liked the Honda Civic.
It was a lot better than getting frustrated at work this morning.
Tonight, though, after feeling generally Gothey-depressed the past couple of days, I'm just gonna stay in and have a
Chasing Amy night.
Nootch.
With the window open.
.the girl who is not very 6:42 PM
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09 October 2001
On MSNBC Kerry Sanders is calmly talking on a videophone while he's hiding from bullets.
I found
this article about the religious aspect of this war. Like I said, telling me I'm evil isn't gonna get me to convert. (You have to get a password and stuff to read it-- it's free.) I was gonna post this last night, but for some reason everything was being spoggly so I couldn't post it.
Maybe a little more to post. Dunno.
.the girl who is not very 11:43 PM
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08 October 2001
oh god. on the radio:
Beck\Loser
I. Suck.
.the girl who is not very 11:25 PM
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I. Will. Not. Get. Laid. Anymore.
It's been three months or so.
There's a little mini-movie that plays in my head. It's me, lying in a hospital bed, alone. Dying.
Me. Alone. Forever. Friends, that's fine. Other than that? I'll convince myself that I'll be okay, and be wrong five minutes later.
Meanwhile my right hand gets more practice.
Okay, I know, that was way too much information than you needed. But I'm just. Frustrated.
Nothing ever works out. Other parts are fucking great, while there's always that one part of my life that sucks ass. Boys are poo-poo heads.
.the girl who is not very 11:21 PM
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Turns out I'm being put on night watch at the bar, which means I'll be getting post-midnight calls. I think that's a good thing. But that also means I probably won't ever see the sun again.
Then again, I've always been a night person.
You can't tell in the text spaces, but I'd just started on this post when the previously mentioned crakhed girlfriend decided to come in and tell me about everything, including a disgusting story about her mother being constipated and her... um, I don't know the right way to word this, digging in.
She insists that she's not in this for Dad's money. I still have a difficult time believing that, and I think she sees that when I nod and smile and don't look at her when she mentions it. Underneath it all I'm trying to keep some sense of civility and respect in this house.
It's like I was telling my friend yesterday who'd seen my house for the first time. He said, "What, is this like MTV Cribs or what?" and I had to say, "Sure, it's a nice house and all, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't have a mother and my Dad's on the decline." I hate to look at things that way.
46.Bob Marley\No Woman No Cry
My life is hitting the point where right now it's change after change after change after change. I'm pushing through in a daze, accepting certainties like the fact that the weather's getting cooler and I'm going to have to put the shorts away for the winter.
And then my sister-in-law talks about maybe moving back east. I think she's insane. That's a totally different thing altogether, for a different post completely.
Writing went very well yesterday. I'm hoping it goes well again today. The only real problem I have is that I'm writing in a
journal with black pages with gel pens that don't seem to want to work. I might have to stop by Office Max and get some new pens, and
not buy anything else while I'm there. I always walk in with the intent of getting one or two things, and I end up buying a bunch of shit that I really don't need.
And I still have that
Bitch and Animal review to do, too.
.the girl who is not very 2:46 PM
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So let the comedy begin: Dad came home today.
And what comes on.
91. The Dust Brothers featuring Tyler Durden\This is Your Life
Ah yes. Things are on the straightaway towards normalcy. The crackhed girlfriend's here, spastic. She'd probably drown herself in the toilet like a cult follower if Dad asked her to. Mom would be so proud. In a way it's good because he gets to rest and order her around, and she obeys like a little puppy dog. If she didn't have the heroin scars on her body it'd be almost cute.
Yes, I'm being serious. No, there's really not much I can do about it other than first degree man slaughter.
He's just really tired, and that's understandable. Right now he needs to sleep and take whatever medication the doctors give him. Man that sounds bad-- it's like he's being kept sedated by the Men in Black because he's got super secrets to an alien weapon.
Okay. Not really. I just hope he's staying home for a really long time.
.the girl who is not very 1:26 PM
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07 October 2001
Just as I get here:
378. Tori Amos\The Waitress
So I woke up with the TV on, to us
bombing Afganistan today-- because I haven't been able to sleep in complete darkness for almost a month now, mostly, and don't think I don't hate that feeling still. I go online and read all kinds of interpretations of what's going on, having turned off the grossly repetitive TV.
I mean, not that I was
really going to watch the Emmys tonight, anyway. If it was the Oscars, I'd probably be a little more teary-eyed. Then again, it just goes to show that Hollywood really
is full of sissy white people. Which is one big reason why I don't live there. That and the 2.9 earthquake they all had this morning, the second one in a month. I had a feeling that was going to happen-- Nostradamusities aside. Sorry, had to get a little Ragey-Against-Something-Or-Other for a bit.
On the one hand I support some kind of focused retaliation for 9/11. There's a reason why we have a military, and this is one of them. We've been playing policeman for years in the Middle East. We've been fixing things.
Seeing this attack coverage reminds me of April '99 when, sitting in a rec room of a hostel in Milan, Italy, watching Italian coverage of our bombing of Bosnia, and my heart sank. That was a Muslim war too, if I remember correctly. For the two weeks post-bombing, we were a little paranoid about travelling around, and we saw quite a few soldiers and guns in Venice, Berlin, and Paris.
It would've made me feel safe if they were American fatigues there, and maybe that's a silly thing to say, but the thing that a lot of people don't understand that Europeans like to fuck with American tourists. They like to yell at us for stuff we've done as a country. There were quite a few times when the four of us got stares, and even got yelled at for those bombings even though the four of us as
people weren't involved.
In war, no matter how small or big it is these days, you are representing your country wherever you go. Ever since the 11th I've been reminded so many times of that trip, how I became so fucking
American there, even if I wasn't too thrilled with the label. I never wanted to wag the flag around because it represented our testosterone-injected "Let's just whip our dicks out and show the world who's boss" kind of attitude about our role in the world some Europeans I talked to seem to think we have. I get that feeling myself sometimes with all these men (and a few women) talking military strategy on TV.
And I don't know very much about our history over there. All I know is that there's a lot of propaganda on both sides, and nobody's really wanting to be educated about the other side's agendas. And if we're attacked again any time soon, it's just another sign that it's never going to stop.
Sometimes I think we should just pull ourselves out of every country and come home. We should be hermits. Not help anybody. But that'll never happen 'cause we all know who's in charge and He's still playing Mad Scientist with this silly little planet.
And I'm also starting to grasp "American" as an actual
race. A hundred years is a long time, but a hundred miles isn't. I'm 5th generation on my Dad's side, 6th on my Mom's. I don't really know what that's supposed to mean now. I'd like to take another trip over to Europe, backpack and see what they're saying now after all this crazy back and forth shit we've been doing, taking action barely a month after the attacks.
I don't really know what to think anymore. I like to think I'm somewhat politically minded, but I'm really not. I'm not willing to sit down with the history of it all. All I know is what I've seen and read, and even
that's been limited. I write. I see what's happening emotionally and make it my own. And knowing that there are people out there who don't know me and hate me for who I am makes me feel sorry for those who feel that way.
But it also makes me think about how, after every hostel we'd left, taking to whomever we were talking to in every country, how they would shake our hands for being good ambassadors for our country, and how every American should be like we are-- a little ignorant, but willing to get yelled at if that means we're going to learn something. Oh yeah, and totally up for making new friends, too. That helps.
Erg. Just stuff running through my head today, because this war feels so far away. I don't even know anybody in the military that headed over there, so it doesn't feel as acute as the Gulf War, when my cousin David went over. It's like I don't have a personal stake in this. But if we get attacked here again, I know I will.
On a completely different note. Dad called today, sounds almost back to normal. He's eating normally. Somewhat. I'm going over there pretty soon to check out his new room. I'm hoping he'll be out sometime in the next few days. Cross some organs.
Oh, and I almost fell asleep during Drowning Pool last night.
And I've been... distracted lately. That's all I'm going to say right now. I'm so girlie sometimes it disgusting.
This too-- 6th row Tori tix for the second show on the 20th next month. I fucking rock the socks.
I don't know how long I'll feel personally content, but I'm lovin' it while it's happening.
.the girl who is not very 3:02 PM
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