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Tuesday, 31 July 2001 (ab/7a) 2:12pm I received my "tax relief" yesterday, and like I promised myself, I put it towards my credit card, which is now empty. Yay me. No doubt they'll be raising my limit again. join us...join ussssss... 5:35pm The break is over—I'm getting zapped next Tuesday evening. 194 hours and counting, which puts me at the lower edge of the anecdotal average time to completion. Which means I could have another hundred hours in store. Never can tell.
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Monday, 30 July 2001 (discipline (manchester)) 5:25pm (Y'see, we went to the Community Thrift Store on Valencia yesterday to donate a bunch of stuff, including Maddy's wedding dress. They have this neat thing where you can specify which charity the proceeds go to; as a result, when the wedding dress is sold, it'll support W.O.M.A.N., Inc, the organization which helped Maddy deal with the aftereffects of her abusive marriage. Sometimes irony is the best revenge. Anyway, afterwards we did some shopping, and I got a short black sleeveless sheath dress. There were no mirrors at the store so I had to try it on over the blouse and skirt I'd been wearing; when we got home I put it on proper. [I'm sure Summer would be glad to know that I'm much more willing to try stuff on than I used to be, since my reluctance used to frustrate the hell out of her when we'd go shopping together. It helps that my body is much more developed than it was back then.] A bit short, but most things are on me. I found myself wishing all the more that I could find a pair of boots in my size without laces, since the dress simply screams for go-go boots. It's very sixties; Maddy says she was reminded of Emma Peel, especially with my boots still on. I tend to picture her in black leather catsuits, but I got the gist. Then, in a rare display of her superego being momentarily distracted by a noise outside, she said "I'd love to do you in that dress." And there you have it.) We saw Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within today. I liked it a lot, and I think it's a shame that it's doing so poorly, since the studios will be even more reluctant to fund relatively experimental films like this. (Meanwhile, the three biggest movies are a remake, a sequel, and a a Julia Roberts picture. Guess we'll be seeing a lot more of those.) Worse, even though she's CGI and therefore there's no actress attempting to protect her dignity, the main character Aki Ross is a woman with a fairly realistic figure who uses her brain and never once strips down to her skivvies. The movie never had a chance. On that note, I have one minor quibble: it's created entirely from scratch with computers, so every element, everything you see on the screen is completely intentional, right? Then why did they have to give Aki's uniform shoulder pads? After the movie we ate at a restaurant on Valencia called Herbivore, which is exactly what it sounds like. Damn good, too. We were in the area yesterday and had almost eaten there but got lured into a cheesesteak place by the promise of garlic fries. In retrospect, we made the better selection today.
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Sunday, 29 July 2001 (discipline (berlin)) 8:19pm Finally, a "fuck me" dress. And it seems to work.
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Saturday, 28 July 2001 (six six sixties) 8:25am No gym this morning. I don't have a practical reason for not going, i.e. just having gotten back from Orky's party and still coming down. We got home from it before midnight (as we were leaving someone else was arriving, who apologized for being later; Orky replied, "You're early") largely because Maddy simply well enough to stay any longer. We knew it was a possibility that she wouldn't be able to make it very long physically, but it seemed worth a shot. In retrospect, I'm not so sure. At least there had been the promise of Orky having the acid he said he'd finally tracked down for us. As it turns out he didn't, but that's the market's fault, not his. He did hint that we'd be able to get something that night, perhaps a few drops like before, but we left before it was brought out. Just as well, really. My other reason for not going to the gym is an indulgence in nihilism. Which is to say, what's the point? What possible difference could it make? This is how I am, and no matter what I do, I'm not going to be different, I'm not going to be like them, no matter how much I want to be. Biology may or may not be destiny, but its resolve is much stronger than anything I could ever muster. And would I be able to make myself not so tall, not so wide in the shoulders? Or change the shape of my face sufficiently? Jonathan's tonight. My personal mood isn't a whole heck of a lot better now than it was on Thursday (the demons are hanging on like snaggletoothed chihuahuas), but I'm going, period. I'm not making that mistake again.
I had two revelations when I was a teenager. One, of course, was that
I was pretty much stuck like that. I was big and tall and hairy and
unappealing and that was that. The other was that at no point do you
stop doing dumb things, that it's all but impossible to truly learn
from your mistakes. Whatever you do learn won't prevent you from
poor judgment in the future, from looking back on actions and being
ashamed. I'm not sure which of the two hit me harder. Probably the
one that's still with me.
Afterwards we walked around, eventually ending up at a Goodwill. Maddy had been saying that we should start haunting the thrift stores more often, and she's quite right. I don't expect most trips to be quite as fruitful as this one, as we left with an armful of really nice skirts and a couple dresses which would surely would have been snatched up at Buffalo Exchange or a trendy place like that long before we'd come along—and we would have paid a lot more for it. And most everything we got fits and looks quite nice, except (most unfortunately) for a absolutely gorgeous Jessica McClintock dress which doesn't...quite...fit. The zipper stops about two inches shy of the top, mainly because of my linebacker frame. Fuck. It would have been perfect for jonco's wedding. Still, for $11, it was a worthy experiment, and now I know that a 12 or 13 or should fit.
Plus, I remember why I exercise reguarly. Which is a valuable lesson.
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Friday, 27 July 2001 (what a day) 6:21am i'm in the midst of a trauma 8:44am It's funny how depression perpetuates itself. I surely would have enjoyed the concert last night—Pike's roommate Aleister says it was amazing, and he was unfamiliar Lucinda's music—and it probably would have improved my mood, but it just wasn't in me. I don't know why, except that I had a torrent of bad thoughts banging around inside my cranium (i don't feel like i belong or fit anywhere anymore, i'm without a country, i have nowhere to go, i've let what friends i had slip away, i don't even belong to my own people because of what i fear inside myself, i'm afraid that if i seek them out i'll discover what scared me away) which I tried to convey to Maddy without being too whiny or reptitive. I don't think I was entirely successful.
And even if I hadn't been in the grip of what may simply be a violent mood swing—I've never been one to
blame this sort of thing on hormones, but you never can tell—I still don't think I would have felt comfortable going without her. It
just wouldn't have been right.
All the same, I'm terribly bummed about how much Le Video has been crippled by its recent forced consolidation into one location. Bad enough that the old store, once the newspaper got put on the inside rather than outside of the window, got tagged—now it's looking like the laserdiscs simply won't be available anymore. They're inaccessible right now (or as of last Saturday, anyhow), and with the laws of physics being their usual obstinate selves, there simply isn't going to be room for them to return. Which sucks because I'm dying to watch Lost Highway again (and if that doesn't speak volumes about my current mood, nothing does), and I simply can't imagine dealing it on pan-and-scan VHS. There's a letterboxed VHS version, but still...
Yeah, I know how I sound. Look, it could be worse, okay? I'm indifferent about Planet of the Apes being remade, which
must account for something.
At least it's Tim Burton, and I never cared for the original movies anyway.
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Thursday, 26 July 2001 (walkabout) 1:44pm Lucinda Williams is playing at the Warfield, and we've had tickets since they went on sale a few months back. Unfortunately, Maddy's unable to go, and I'd seriously considered not going either. It just feels wrong somehow, partially because she'd bought the tickets as an anniversary present. And it's not that I mind going to concerts by myself; I've known people who can't handle going to movie alone, let alone something like this. Maddy insisted that I should go, that I shouldn't miss it on account of her. So I'm going. Occupying the other seat will be Pike's roommate, whom I've corresponded with but never met. (He's seen me, though, at Folsom and Pink Saturday. Just to confirm that, yes, sometimes they really are watching you.) Which I guess is also a good incentive to go. Meeting new people and all, something I don't do nearly enough. Or even seeing the people I already know.
Tomorrow night we're invited to party being thrown by a friend of Orky's,
Saturday it's Jonathan Richman at The Bottom of the Hill, we'd
tossed around the idea of going to the
Gilroy Garlic Festival
on Sunday, and on Monday morning I'm taking my car in for smog certification. Except
for the last one, though, it's all kinda up in air.
Anyway, I think I'm stressed out.
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Wednesday, 25 July 2001 (persuasion) 9:53am The email. 12:34pm Apparently there are people volunteering to get laid off. Perhaps it helps that I like my job, but that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. More than that, it's chickenshit, since while pretending to show their dissatisfaction by leaving, they still get the severance package. If these people really wanted to send a message—and had any intestinal fortitude—they'd just quit. But, no. They want the physics-defying properties of the self-replenishing cake. Cowards. And I don't just say this because many of these people are coworkers of Maddy's who make her life miserable. Like the one whom I unfortunately crossed paths with this morning and took the opportunity to grill me about the specifics of Maddy's sickness. (Pretend I mentioned in yesterday's entry that Maddy was sick.) This is her second day away from work, she isn't getting any healthier, and she's seeing her doctor this evening, the soonest they could get her in. The questioner happens to be someone who's admitted to Maddy that they call in sick fairly often simply because they don't like their job. And they feel they have the right to ask me, with an unmistakable air of suspicion, exactly what's wrong with her? I don't think so.
Feeling the need to try something new with my at-work fashion—perhaps in anticipation
of a meeting this morning with a few dozen of my departmental contemporaries, as well as
the CEO, to discuss the upcoming layoffs—I did the "fashioning a pair of stripeys into a long-sleeved undershirt" bit
this morning. It's as old as the hills, I know, and was passe before I bought my first
pair, but I'd never done it before. I like how it looks, and it actually offers the same
support as the sports bra I normally wear, although I do wish that the Johnny The
Homicidal Maniac t-shirt I found on the bargain rack at Hot Topic some months ago
wasn't three sizes too small. Alas.
I don't point these things out because of any sort of disgust or outrage. The general public finds that sort of thing funny, and whoever cut the trailer was certainly no fool. It's just me acknowledging the world around me, and the mindset I can expect to find when I really try to face the world, when I finally stop pussyfooting around.
More amusing is the "publicity" section of the horrendously designed official site.
(I'm not going to link to it, but I'm sure you can do the math. Besides, they've already
paid off the search engines.)
Amongst
the poorly scanned photos is one of the female lead—the real girl, not the wannabe
used for the cheap laugh—Ali Larter on the cover of Esquire, calling her "Hollywood's
Next Dream Girl." Except she's called Allegra Coleman (death to the demoness Allegra Coleman!), and in fact it was a
straight-faced spoof
of celebrity puff pieces. A lot of people at the time didn't get the joke, and I can't
tell if that's still the case. Maybe that old truism about any
publicity being good publicity as long as they spell your name right doesn't hold true
anymore—her real name isn't on there, and the picture itself is five years
old, but what difference does it make? Or maybe a
picture isn't so much worth a thousand words as a word is now only worth one-thousandth of a picture, if even that much. It was only
a matter of time, and it has nothing to do with wisdom.
While she was getting looked at, I was down the street at the library, in spite of the fact that I'm already juggling two books (Thomas Cahill's The Gift of the Jews and William Poundstone's Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos). I'm glad I did, because I found Daniel Clowes' Ghost World, which I've been curious about ever since I read that Terry Zwigoff was making it his first narrative film. So far, it's fucking brilliant, as the movie is also said to be. Yay.
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Tuesday, 24 July 2001 (hot on the heels of love) 9:53am The ironic part being that I've been ticketed twice lately, yesterday and Friday, both at the meters outside my office. Friday it's entirely possible that I got caught up in work and let it expire, but yesterday I was much more conscious of the time, particularly since it was Maddy's car. Parking tickets don't go on the permanent record, but it's the principle of the matter—I didn't want to seem irresponsible with her property. So I went out and refed the meter every sixty to ninety minutes, never letting it reach zero. I got ticketed anyway, and was so embarrassed that I couldn't even bring myself to tell Maddy about it until this morning. (If I could easily keep secrets from her I wouldn't have told her at all, but I'm not very good at that.) Looking closely at the tickets, I see it's not because I let the meter expire, but because they've started enforcing the heretofore unenforced two hour limit at the meters. So there you have it. And yet, I don't consider them Nazis. I guess I've always agreed with Tom Tomorrow about the abuse of that word. Then again, you know me—I'm all P.C. and stuff. 2:02pm The CEO just announced a "15 percent reduction in our global workforce over the next six weeks." Well, shit. Here we go again. In the plus column, barefoot's finally gotten some decent job prospects, including a longshot as a producer at startrek.com, which to me would fall firmly into the category of "coolest job ever." Not entirely coincidentally, his best friend of twenty-five years happens to be the website's executive producer, which is all the more incentive. Of course, it'll mean they have to move to L.A., which they're more than ready to do if the opportunity does arise. The majority of their friends are there, barefoot is pretty much over the Bay Area thing, and Rox has never really liked it here to begin with.
For as much as I hope he gets the job, I'd hate to see them leave. Oh well; I suppose we can eat at King Yen
by ourselves. (Can, and have.) And it would solve the issue of how to avoid the Hindquarter next Fourth of
July...
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Monday, 23 July 2001 (exotica) 7:26am 192.
But that's okay, because the numbers are meaningless.
If it ever arrives, it'll aid in finally paying off my (single) credit card. There's also my student loans to consider, and the car, and of course simply putting it into savings is a good idea too (as Maddy is doing), but I really want to get out of debt with Visa. If absolutely nothing else, it'll piss them off, and that's always a good feeling. Bad enough that I still have the same card that came with my student account in '94. Am I a deadbeat, or what? By their standards, yes. I guess it's a sign of being a grown-up that I'm concerned about my credit rating. And my cholestrol. At least I know the latter is better than my father's. Of course, I may have to start from scratch when it comes time to start changing my name on the myriad of paperwork out there. There isn't an M or F on my credit card and it shouldn't make a difference to them, but you never can tell, especially since my credit history up until that point will have been under the old name. It's times like this that I kinda wish Maggie and I were still on speaking terms, so I could talk to someone who's already dealt with all this.
Oh! That's right. I forgot. She's a real girl. Silly me. No skeletons in that closet. Completely pure,
that one. If she was born anything, she was born Lesbian, thank you very much.
i don't expect you
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Sunday, 22 July 2001 (convincing people) 5:47pm Shaved this morning. Hadn't originally planned to, but I now know that Phil will only need two or three days of growth to work with. Since it won't be for a couple weeks yet... I'm still amazed that some trannies don't get electro done. I can completely understand the financial aspect, but the notion that those who can afford it don't because of the discomfort is beyond me. Of course, I'm in no rush for SRS, so I surely seem equally alien. Remember the Gandhi II segment in UHF? Sure you do. (Admit, it you've seen the movie on cable or video. I know it wasn't in the theater, because Jonco and I were there, and you weren't the other person there.) That's pretty much Ben Kingsley's level of intensity in Sexy Beast, the inscrutably named British gangster flick we saw today at the Bridge. If you've ever wanted to hear the Mahatma say "cunt" several dozen times, you're in luck. It's actually a really good movie. After that we'd planned to see Chungking Express at The Red Vic, but when we drove into the Haight we discovered that the Kezar Pavillion parking lot was full. First time that's happened to us, and we took it as an omen to just head home. It's hard enough to find street parking under normal circumstances, and it surely would have been impossible with the lot unavailable. That's the tradeoff, I suppose, for living in a city where one is even able to see movies like that in theaters. Fresno's movie theaters had plenty of parking, but somehow, that wouldn't make it worth it.
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Saturday, 21 July 2001 (tanith) 2:01pm I guess weekend mornings are my new regular workout time. Better than nothing. And even did crunches this morning without hurting myself. (So far as I know.) There are quite a few regulars there, not surprisingly. One I've noticed is a boy of Middle Eastern descent, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. He usually comes in around ten and spends fifteen minutes on the treadmill, fifteen on the crosstrainer, et cetera. Nothing unusual there. What I find interesting is that an adult whom I assume to be his father also comes along. He spends most of the time sitting near the exit reading the paper, but occasionally comes over to the kid, snaps at him, and walks back. I get the feeling that one of the two doesn't necessarily want them to be there at all. Either the guy's telling the kid to hurry up, or making sure that he's doing it right, but I'm not sure which.
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