Thing is, I have a gig in LA this weekend. Since my craptastic Neon just passed one hundred thousand miles and is showing its age, I got the idea into my head to rent a car. The right rental one would also allow me the luxury of cruise control, which comes in awfully damn handy on those endless miles between here and there. Problem is, you need a credit card to rent a car. If I'd reported the card as lost earlier, I might well have the new one by now. Because I'm a twit, I did not. There's really no way to put a positive spin on it. Nobody's fault but mine.

But wait—most Hertz locations take debit cards, and I haven't lost my ATM card yet! Most ATM cards are debit/check cards as well, so it's all good, right? Um, no. After reading this around the time I lost my card earlier in the year, I made sure my replacement card was ATM only. When I lost it again a couple months ago, I made sure that replacement was ATM only as well. Ergo, no debit or check card functionality. I don't regret having made that decision, since I knew I'd be sacrificing certain conveniences for increased security. It was the right thing to do, even if it's kicking me in the ass right now.

3:35pm

I didn't get the job. Some things go away before you even have them.

i'm freezing
i'm starving
i'm bleeding to death
EVERYTHING'S FINE

What I'm feeling now, a week after the election, is the sense of distress that everybody else had back then. We are so fucked, it ain't even funny.

A week after The Great Overshadowing, I got lost my well-paying job at CNET. While there is the bright spot of possibly being gainfully employed again as soon as next week, all has not been well at home lately. For me, personal tragedy seems to go hand-in-hand with national tragedy.

As for my performance, it's the first K'vetch reading I've felt good about in a long time. (We'll ignore those three months I recently missed.) I really seemed to hold the audience, and I got some good feedback afterwards. Not bad for being as tired and distracted as I was. Maybe it even helped, I don't know. I've performed while completely awake and alert and focused plenty of times. It's more exciting when I'm not quite all there, when I'm on the edge of keeping it together.

I was distracted because, on top of everything else, I have that job interview for a legal secretary this afternoon. Trying not to stress about it too much, but, ack. I really want and need the job, and I think I have a good shot. They wouldn't have called me in otherwise, right? Both my resume and especially my cover letter make it clear that I don't have any experience in the field, and their job listing used the magic words "entry level." So, it should all be good. Right? Right. My hair is rooty, but I doubt the fact that I'm a bottle blonde is going to be a dealbreaker. It's still more quote-professional-unquote, or at least quote-hireable-unquote, than purple. I do miss the purple sometimes, but that already feels like a different life.

10:31am

Got another callback, for an admin position at a cellphone company. It's nice to be wanted.

11:20pm

At the risk of sounding positive about something, the interview went really well. I won't know for sure until Wednesday, but I've got a good feeling about it. That I'd get to dress casually (which is to say, like myself) and have internet access makes it all the more appealing.

Pirate Cat Radio was back on the air in time for me to do my show. Though I'd had a setlist planned, I found myself in an aggro mood and changed it accordingly. Sometimes a little (or a lot of) extreme noise will cure what ails you. What ails me, anyway. Don't know about you. I said some harsh and downright unpleasant things. Doesn't really matter. Nobody but Temple was listening anyway, and she's heard a lot worse.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.


While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Speaking of sodomatrimony—y'know, I've lived in San Francsico for ten years, and have been somewhat active within it for the last five. Still, I feel like I've only just arrived, since I got a shout-out in Beth Lisick's column for my contribution to I Do / I Don't, along with Margaret Cho and my gay boyfriend Horehound. It's still weird to hear (as it were) my name spoken in the same breath as Margaret Cho.

Don't they have to hire me? I'm blonde now, damnit!

Speaking of such things (sorta), Reverend Michel's pictures from Gender Pirates last week are up. (Fair warning: it's a page of thumbnails. The top half is mostly comprised of pictures from the burlesque act which went before me. There's some partial and quite possibly disturbing nudity, so proceed with caution, especially if you're sensitive about whose thonged ass you see.) I like to pretend that the red light is from the lunar eclipse that night.

Actually, we probably won't talk about it much. What's there to say, really? Bush won. Four more years. Not much I can do about it. I voted early, and endorsed Kerry on my radio show on Monday night, no doubt strongly influencing the one undecided voter who might have possibly been listening. I didn't even make jokes about voting for Nader. (There? Are you happy? You can't blame me for the outcome this year.) What's happened as happened, and there's no point in wasting my one hour every two weeks talking about it. "Sherilyn" begins with the same letter as "solipsism," after all. (Of course, so does "sauerkraut." I have yet to figure out the cosmic significance of that.)

Last night I went to a Pirate Cat Radio election results party, while Maddy joined a group outing to the Daly City Googolplex for Saw. I'm far from certain I made the right decision, since the party (like the station itself) mostly consisted of drunk straight boys. Not really my scene, not by a long shot. On the plus side, a few of my old Le Video co-workers were present. Actually, the presence of Trent was the only real plus; I haven't seen him since the late nineties, and he's on my mind every so often. He's introduced more color into his wardrobe, not to mention facial hair, but that slightly maniacal grin is still there, bless him.

Then there was the guy who'd originally hired me. When he saw me, he said Hello, Sir. Okay, yeah, he's British, maybe that accounts for something, but—hello! Sir? Um, which part of the pigtailed blonde hair and makeup and the fact that my face is demonstrably more female than it was seven years ago don't you get? Yeah, you knew me as a boy, but come on! Do I look like I still consider myself to be one? Ugh. That shot my mood down for a while.

It was picked up slightly by the girl making the rounds with the camera, who kept gushing about how pretty and photogenic I am. Thank you! Not a Sir, not by a long shot. Not by several years. Then there was the girl with the laptop, who showed me a picture of A Friend Who Looks Just Like You. Dunno how much she looked like me, but she was quite the hottie, no question. Mostly made up for the other stuff.

And, yeah, Kerry lost. There, as I say, you go. Y'all can try to move to Canada if you want. More parking for me. Besides, there's a lot of work to be done.

3:15pm

everything is turning out so dark...

I got back from the airport in just enough time to run around like a chicken sans head trying to get my piece for the Morbid Curiosity reading printed out, since our printer remains fux0red and I hadn't been able to go to Femina Potens to pick up the folder of stories which I'd dumbly left there earlier in the month. Christa had suggested I just read from the laptop like she had the day before, and I strongly considered doing it, but, no. I'm just too much of a spaz. Our friend Tracy was kind enough to drive both me and Collette (who also needed something printed out) to her apartment to use her computer. Got back in time for our reading, though we missed Summer's reading as a result. Still, though. Yay. There was actually a decent-sized audience by Spookycon standards, complete with a few unfamiliar faces. Those are always nice to see.

Afterwards, our core group decided to go to Allegra's to decompress. Unfortunately, her apartment is within walking distance of the Castro. Parking out there is bad enough on a normal day. After circling for half an hour, we called it quits. The thought of going home was depressing (no! it's too early for this weekend to be over! no!), almost overwhelmingly so. Just for kicks, I tried to find parking around Haight and Fillmore so we could go to our (third?) favorite sushi place for Crunchy Rolls. Don't laugh; I managed to park there last year on Halloween. No such luck this year.

Mona Lisa's on Columbus was tempting. We went there for the first time on Friday night with Tracy, when we should have been at home coloring Maddy's hair, and became quite smitten with the place, especially since we can get in and out for under fifteen bucks. I realized that North Beach parking would be equally if not more hellish, so so Plan D was quickly conceived, gestated and birthed: Kiki's Sushi at 9th and Irving. My preference for comfort sushi is our regular place in Pacifica, but Halloween or no Halloween, it's closed on Sundays. After eating one roll too many and feeling the false comfort of a stomach full of nori, seasoned rice and imitation crabmeat, I was a little less despair-y about admitting defeat and going home. It helped that Maddy had the fabulous idea of trying the acid which a friend recently given us.

He'd warned that it was over ten years old, however, and it turned out to be nothing but paper. I never thought I'd be sad to not feel my teeth starting to grind from the speed inevitably cut into acid these days—and it would have come in especially handy considering that I got all of three hours of sleep the night before—but even that had long since disintegrated into its component atoms. After a couple hours of mostly nothing, we went to bed.