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Friday, 20 March 2009 (in her tribe) 12:10pm I went to another food bank pantry yesterday afternoon. On average, I was ten inches taller, twenty years younger and considerably paler than everyone else there. Such is life. sometime after midnight Tonight was Midnites for Maniacs at The Castro. It hasn't been too difficult to curb my spending this past month, especially since I was never a big spender to begin with, but this I'm going to continue, and Midnites for Maniacs is something I'm not giving up. Ten bucks once a month shouldn't be a problem. I was alone in the back row for the first two movies, and KrOB and Puzzling Evidence joined me for the third movie. Talking to them afterward, we realized that I can finally join Puzzling Evidence on his show on KPFA. It's three in the morning on Fridays, but, hye, it's not like I have a day job to worry about. | ||
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Thursday, 19 March 2009 (stanco e nudo) 11:40am Perdita spent most of last night on the bed with me. Not all of it, but most. I was back from the gym this morning by half past nine, which is an improvement. If I get there by seven, I can park right out in front without worrying about feeding the meter. It occurs to me that I should write Tyrol and tell him that I won't be coming to his spin class anymore. I mean, theoretically I can go until the end of April—it's paid for—but part of me feels like that time is over. Poking around the various porn industry news sites, I was unsurprised to find there weren't any mention of the layoffs. They don't generally do much but reprint press releases, and the corporate uberlords sure as hell aren't going to put out a press release about that. There was this, however, from a story about an "internet task force" proposed by the man who swung the axe on me and Tor and the others: One of the primary responsibilities of the task force would be to find ways to encourage more Internet purchases of goods, services, information and entertainment.Yeah. 3:40pm Heading to Oakland to have dinner with The First. 11:21pm Marc Maron's doing a one-man show called Scorching the Earth about the demise of his marriage. I want to see it so very, very much. (A subject matter that's close to my heart.) Unfortunately, it's only in New York. | ||
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009 (of questionable palatability) 7:51am Perdita joined me. Now, off to the gym. 9:08pm I took half a carload of old electronics stuff, including dead laptops and DVD players and such, to Goodwill today. Next, I suppose, I tackle the books and clothes. Purge, purge, purge. | ||
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Tuesday, 17 March 2009 (the bottom track) 10:34am The housecleaning continues, mostly focusing on my room today. It's coming along, and hopefully I won't spend more than another day or two on it. Then, I focus on other things. For now, the trick is learning to tell the difference between what piles to rearrange and what to get rid of entirely. Getting rid of things is always hard, even though I'm damned good at losing things. Dyanne and I have been corresponding on and off the last few months. Following through on what struck me as a flirtatious tone in her emails (signing off with "always in my thoughts," "love always" and the like), I told her that while I had no idea what her relationship status is these days, or what it's likely to be by the time she reaches San Francisco (which she's been working towards), but if she's interested and/or available, I'd love to take her out. She said she's been with her boyfriend (the one she hadn't mentioned in the emails, always speaking singularly when talking about her plans, always i and never we) for six years, and they don't share. Sharing hadn't really been what I had in mind, but it's not like it matters. So it goes. Comcast cable internet got installed this morning, and I've cancelled my AT&T landline (which I've had since May of 1995) and the DSL (which I've had since March of 2000. Not all change is bad. No change is bad, actually. It's inevitable, which makes it neither good or bad. Damned if I can't help but having adverse emotional reactions, though. Perdita's been acting a little distant ever since we got back from Fresno. I'm anthropomorphizing her to an extent, but it feels like this happens every time. These last couple of nights have been the worst, though: she doesn't sleep next to me anymore. That's new. Used to be, as soon as she even thought I was going to bed, she'd jump onto the bed and lie in her usual place in the upper right corner of the mattress, next to my pillow. That's been her place since shortly after I got her. These last couple of nights, however, if she joins me at all, she doesn't last very long, restlessly pacing around before getting off the bed entirely. I can usually call her back over, then she leaves again after a few minutes. I don't know why she's changed her mind (except that she's a cat and there's no accounting for what a cat does any more than there's accounting for what a human does—hell, there's less accounting for what a human does), but it hurts. I cried (and tweeted) when she went away last night. Perhaps she's just a cat, but in a lot of ways, she's all I've got. And it's not even a question of physical contact, since aside from petting her a little, she doesn't sleep on me or against me or anything. But going to sleep with her next to me and having her still there when I wake up has been a source of great comfort to me during this past dark year, and I'm not ready to lose that. Does it matter if I'm ready? Of course not, and I'm also aware that the nerves which are being triggered are the same ones as which resulted in crying jags and panic attacks on those nights that Vash refused to cuddle with me, though the subtext on those occasions was the mounting evidence that our relationship was disintegrating. I know Perdita isn't going anywhere, but as I said, she's all I've got, and with no prospects for human companionship in the foreseeable future (today is Ennui's birthday, apropos of nothing), losing something as simple as my cat wanting to be next to me when I sleep pushes my already fragile emotional state over the edge. Which would explain why I'm crying as I type this, because I'm just barely keeping my shit totgether these days as it is. I'm going to bed soon, so I can to get up early to go to the gym, because if I can't save my soul I'll save my body. Perdita will join me, or she won't. | ||
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Monday, 16 March 2009 (solutions and alternatives) 10:34am Top of the agenda for my first full week on the dole at home: cleaning. As goes the house, so goes the head. I hope. 2:49pm My bedroom's in that mid-cleaning stage where it's messier than ever. Making space on the bed tonight is going to be tricky. 11:10pm KrOB's Drive-Out Theater was tonight, and it was one that him and I had talked about quite a bit (a Ray Dennis Steckler tribute), but instead I worked out with Raphaela. Better for me, and less expensive. Afterward, I went to Pete and Sarah Goldie's place to watch the penultimate episode of Battlestar Galactica. I'm going to miss our weekly viewing ritual almost as much as the show itself. | ||
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Sunday, 15 March 2009 (every motive escalate) 12:11pm I just went to my first food bank pantry. It was a bit of a mobscene, which means it's good experience for when society finally breaks down and the food riots begin. 2:49pm Phooey. It seems I forgot to rescue the PSDs of the Bad Movie Night flyers from my old work computer. They're not difficult to redo, just time-consuming. 3:20pm Ha! I knew I wouldn't have neglected to make a backup of that stuff—I just hid the disc from myself, and I found it now. Net result: win! 11:05pm Post-Bad Movie Night boozing with Cesare at Doc's Clock. What the hell, neither of us have to work tomorrow. sometime after midnight At Divas singing karaoke (R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue"), because sometimes that's all that's left. | ||
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Saturday, 14 March 2009 (boxed and shelved) 2:06pm I went to the gym this morning—the place on Market where Raphaela work out, not Gold's—and am now back home. But tonight I leave the house for real, since it's the second week of AIRspace at The Garage. It's my second performance this week, after Bawdy Storytelling this past Thursday. That was a fun show, but my energy level was never quite right, especially because the format was telling stories without paper, and I cheated and read off the page. And I was just...off in general, not fitting in. At one point, the host mentioned that The Power Exchange is reopening, and in a room full of hardcore kinky poly San Francisco sex-positive types, I was one of about three people who applauded the news. Says a lot right there. 4:24pm Ah, the restorative powers of the midday nap. 9:39pm The second week of AIRspace was a big hit. I kinda futzed some of my lines towards the end of the piece, but I don't think anyone noticed. | ||
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Friday, 13 March 2009 (florists four) 10:31am Heading to the gym. "Time off due to personal upheaval" is over, and if I can't save my soul, I'll save my body. 1:22pm It looks like the Community Thrift Store on Valencia has changed hands, and the staff is even crankier than before, which I hadn't thought possible. Anyway, I went there on a hunch after the gym and found exactly what I was looking for: a decent office chairk, something I've been desperately needing. It's not as nice as my chair at the old office, but it's worlds better than anything else I had at home, and it was all of ten bucks. It's going to make a big difference in my productivity. I hope. 9:01pm I was planning on writing today, but I've caught the housecleaning wave, so I'm riding it. The Black Light District hasn't had a good thorough cleaning since xmas '07, and I think decluttering will do my mood good. | ||
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Thursday, 12 March 2009 (the left hand of the dead) 1:25pm This, I now know, is why I made a point of spending the first few days of this week in Fresno: so I could delay the inevitable sinking feeling of being at home, unemployed, and thinking to myself: what happens now? I did just order Comcast Cable Internet. I've heard from many directions that they're evil, and I don't doubt it, but they're also all that's available here in the Outer Lands, and I need reliable internet service. Besides, it'll be faster and cheaper than my AT&T DSL and landline, both of which I'm going to cancel. The Comcast people, in true pusher style, were even kind enough to cut the installation fee in half because I was pleading poverty. Gotta work it however I can. So, yeah. What happens now? 4:21pm Temple re-enters my life, for starters. sometime after midnight I'm out of phase. I've fallen out of phase, and it's scary and overwhelming and I don't know how to fix it. | ||
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Wednesday, 11 March 2009 (continental drift divide) 6:22pm Okay. So. Except for the epilogue, I'm declaring the damn thing done. The real first draft, anyway. I've fixed the narrative glitches, removed what needed to be removed and sutured the parts that needed to be sutured. I think. It's going to take outside eyes to know for sure, and I'm sure if I'm ever able to get it to a professional editor they'll identify all the myriad of other things that are wrong with it. No doubt there's a zillion. But, for now, chapterwise, it looks like this:
If my ability to use a calculator can be trusted, that's 75,814 words. Probably a couple thousand more before i'm done with it, and tens of thousands less when an editor is done with it. Don't know how many pages it is—each chapter is its own word document, and I haven't smooshed the current draft together yet—but I'm sure it's a lot. I'm heading back to San Francisco tonight. I was going to leave tomorrow morning, but there's no good reason to wait. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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