Monthly Archives: August 2011

goodness, life

Dreamtime

I meant to come home and pack and paint, but I’ve been so exhausted I thought I’d venture a nap.  I suck at napping.  I can’t stop thinking and getting distracted by little noises.  The longer it takes me to fall asleep, the more annoyed I get that I haven’t, until I’m so frustrated that I have to get up.

As silly as this sounds, I need Boyfriend there to fall asleep.  He’s like Ambien, and without him, I’m sunk.  But today, for the first time in a long time, I fell asleep (after a while).  And then I had awesome, bizarre dreams.  I woke up a half hour ago, and had to write them down.  I love being a vivid dreamer.  Except during nightmaretime.  Nightmaretime is the worst time.

I’m supposed to be at a birthday party for Curly Asian Friend, but I was exhausted after work, so I took a nap and fell asleep at Karate Job.  When I wake up, I rush over to a restaurant to find my friends waiting for a table in a lobby.  Curly Asian Friend is wearing the most tattered, semi-transparent boxers I’ve ever seen, and when he bends over to more closely inspect something on the wall, it’s like he’s mooning us.  I giggle, and when he leaves to go to the bathroom, I point it out to my other friends, who howl with laughter.  Then everything resets and I’m waking up at Karate Job again.  My boss is there with four or five toddlers and their moms, singing some horrible, off-key song about birthdays or something.  I hate it.  I ask my boss which CPK I should go to to meet my friends, and she tells me.  I rush to meet them for dinner.  As I sit at the table, the owners of the restaurant release two female lions for a more exotic feel.  The lions walk side by side, rubbing faces, heading for our table.  One of them slams its paw on the table close to me twice, as if hunting for a bug before they are taken away.  There are three frightened Siamese kittens in the bathroom who run and huddle when I try to pet them.

SHIFT

I’m supposed to be collecting intelligence for a group.  I use my fans to fly across a seaside town to a school (college?).  I find my car, cruise angrily for parking, and when I open my passenger door for some reason, it hits a guy in the face as he’s getting into his own black SUV.  I freeze, then rush over to apologize.  His contact lens has been pushed to the wrong part of his eye, it’s not a big deal, he fixes it.  When he looks up, and I can see that he’s beautiful;  hazel eyes, tan skin, longish hair, a kind smile.  I know him somehow.  I get close to inspect the scratch over his eye, he pokes fun at me for being nosy.  I smile and agree, and back off.  I ask for his name: Meredith.  I say, Meredith, to help me remember.  Later, his sister calls him Marciano.  I meet her and their father at a mansion, we go out on the veranda.  I take four fans (two white, two black) just in case I run into trouble.  Turns out they are enemies, and calmly take two of my fans from a table where I placed them, thinking them weapons.  I grab the other two, and as the sister is lying down to sunbathe with a white fan under her head, I knock her unconscious with one of them, saying “Esto es el mio.”  When I reach for the fan, it has turned into a white bottle of wine.  A bodyguard suddenly takes notice, and raises his gun.  I throw the wine bottle at him before I make a dash for the edge of the balcony and leap with fans out.  I can only glide because I’m so panicked.  I hit the ground running, and don’t look back.  I need to find a high place to take off from so I can flee.

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goodness, life

That fresh feeling

I am occasionally overwhelmed with a sense of love for my friends.  Love, like fear, is difficult to describe.  I have to rely on our shared experience as humans to convey the depth of my loyalty and affection for them.  I would describe the sensation like this: I’m on a boat on the ocean.  I jump overboard and squeeze my eyes shut as I plunge into the water; that flash of adventurous anticipation that forces my eyes open before I stop sinking and start to float: that’s what love feels like: an adventure.  Then it wells up inside me, a bubbling, laughing fountain, overflowing at my temples, coating me with a bright, oily shine.

I think I will never get to know my friends as well as I would like.  Like a second family, my goal is to make them feel loved, and sometimes I fail.  I want to make their lives easier, to protect them from hardship, and feed them delicious meals.  I want to provide for them and fight for them.  I want them to sleep soundly at night.  I want them to believe their hard work will pay off.  I want to give each of them the chance to succeed in their own way.  I want them to never feel alone.

As I read what I’ve written I realize this is how a parent feels for her child, and I begin to understand that all love probably shares common roots: protection, encouragement, joy, success.

I feel like I could power a tiny mouse-town with this feeling.  It spins like a top behind my eyes, and hums contentedly in my chest.  I smile quietly in the dark as I wait for sleep, in the car as I glance in the rear-view mirror, on the couch watching TV with Boyfriend, knowing I will see my friends soon.

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goodness, life

Le Move

I might have to hide somewhere in here and jump out at Diminutive Roommate tonight

I have too much stuff.  I thought to myself, “Moving will be so cleansing!  What an excellent experience!  I can’t wait to start getting rid of all the junk I’ve been accumulating for the past three-plus years I’ve been living here!”  While all that’s good and true, packing the other 85% of my crap has been distinctively less rewarding.  All my free time for the past two weeks has been taken up with driving all over LA picking up cardboard boxes from people on craigslist, packing, spackling, painting, and discovering more crap that needs packing.  Yesterday we went through the kitchen (almost done!).  Highlight: We got rid of 90% of the liquor cabinet, and discovered that I still had one bottle of that wine I love so much!  A night of celebratory imbibing will certainly be in order once we settle in.

Today we’ll be dealing with Diminutive Roommate’s flatscreen tv.  The plan is to wrap it in moving blankets, then not break it.  The move has been exhausting but good.  I got to see which art books I want to keep (almost all), and which I should really take a look at instead of piling crap in front of them (Van Dyck is the man, y’all).  Diminutive Roommate’s cat (Calico) has found a new nook  to tuck into every day, which is adorable, and I’m starting to get excited about the new place.

I could go for a solid four hour nap, but I have to get packing again… After I finish this episode of Kaze no Stigma.

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goodness, nerd

Reasonably awesome

It’s frustrating being a nerdy female in large part because the majority of the stuff that fascinates me is geared to be sold to the male portion of our species, resulting it scantily clad female healer classes in (almost) every fantasy war story ever (Eowyn kinda rules).

Then something like this comes along, and I smile.  It’s Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor, and it’s a dream come true.  Awesome women in brutal armor without an inch of cleavage or chain-mail bikini in the bunch.  This is what I picture when I think of what I would be like as a Tolkien-esque fighter; probably a ranger of some kind, definitely hooded.

I was happy to see that Artesia made it onto that page.  Sure, she’s a witch/concubine/warrior, which is kinda the opposite of the point of this page, but she always wore the coolest armor.

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goodness, nerd

The Hobbit cometh

above: MAGIC

I just finished The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Aside from being totally epic, I was surprised that the writing was so palatable.  From what I was told, I thought it would be pages and pages of detailed elf lineage, and chapters full of unnecessary descriptions of the beauty of ladies in tall cities and the grand histories of long-dead kings.  What I found was a thoroughly engulfing universe I found my self longing to be a part of.  The writing is, frankly, poetic at times.  It’s easy to understand why people read these tomes over and over.  There’s so much to experience.

Of course, reading the trilogy got me all nostalgic for The Hobbit, which I read a couple of times growing up.  It has a shape-shifting druid in it!  And a dragon and trolls and treasure!  I was hooked.  I’d never read anything like it.  It took its time and then suddenly thrust you in the middle of something fantastic!  I lost the copy I had growing up, but eBay to the rescue!  I bought it from a nice lady in Aurora, Illinois for $4.  It just arrived at Office Job.  So excited 🙂

I hear there’s a movie or some such coming out… later.  If it’s done similarly to the LoTR, it should be good, but I really don’t give two shits about a movie when I can have the original experience of my childhood.  BOOKS, people.  BOOKS.

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badness, goodness, life

Nightmare on paper

There’s an artist named David Devries who takes children’s drawings of monsters and redraws them to look more realistic.  It’s a super cool idea, and I like the execution.  I almost feel like he’s too true to the kids’ drawings, though.  Kids draw ideas, representations of what they see in their minds.  They can’t draw exactly what they see, but when something is tall, they draw it thin and long, that kind of thing.  I think a little artistic license would be fun for this guy’s project.

I had a recurring nightmare growing up in which I would hide at the end of a narrow outdoor hallway.  There’s nowhere to hide though, so I just crouched down on the floor and made myself as small as possible while keeping my feet under me and my eyes up in case I needed to run (to where?  I was trapped).  I usually dreamed vividly, so the fact that this dream was always in black and white is probably why it stuck with me.  At the end of this hall/alleyway, is a street where people are walking by, going about their day.  But of course, they’re not really people.  They’re long, gangly, black figures with long snout-faces.  They were indistinguishable from each other.

Being a Communist state or whatever, everyone had to conform.  I was clearly not conforming, because I wasn’t a Snout-Face, which is why I had to hide.  Naturally one of them spotted me and came after me.  And he brought friends.  They came marching down the alley with a swift, chilling grace that made panic set fire to my insides, and woke me up.

There really is no way to describe how purely fear is felt in a nightmare.  It’s just terrifying.  Luckily, we’ve all had that experience, so we don’t need to find the words to explain it.

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goodness, humor

Is this NSFW or what?

Before you ask, yeah, I’m a little drunk.  I’m a total light weight.  There is no such thing as “Sure, I’ll have a beer,” for me.  It’s more like “Sure, I have time to get drunk then sober up before I have to drive home.”  Tonight I had one beer with dinner, so YES, I am drunk.

mmmmm, boobies...

I don’t like falling asleep drunk.  Rather, it’s hard for me to fall asleep drunk because I’m so dizzy.  Then, because being supine results in equal distribution of blood to all parts of the body, my head gets all blood-swollen and I get dizzier.  Also hot.  Because of the beer’s exothermic reaction with my fabulous body.

So instead of going to bed, I hop on my compy and cruise around looking at online comics I neglected to read at work (what a slacker).  Picture, if you will, a damn beautiful tipsy brunette (I get pretty when drunk cus my face softens up and I’m usually out with friends so I put a little makeup on and put some effort into my clothes, plus my standards probably drop a little once I start drinking, etc.) reading one of her favorite online comics (SMBC) when she comes across THIS (see picture).

Yes, it’s a woman fondling herself.  Why?  Because Verizon made her crazy with their horrendously terrible customer service, and she’s become one of those lunatics that touch themselves in public.  And what more public place to experience your own body than the interwebz.

Later they show us that they intentionally photoshopped out a perfectly good laptop, which she is cradling against her breast for what can surely be no good fucking reason.  Is it her love child with Steve (as of today) Jobless?  Did Verizon create a human cyborg that can love machines and people equally?  Being less than sober, I thought, “Maybe this is normal, and my blood alcohol level is altering my perception to make me think this is weird.”  Public self-groping is weird, though, right?  Right?

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goodness

This should be permanent

Improv Everywhere is one of my favorite things.  I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned them before!  They get a bunch of strangers together and get them to do something simple and often hilarious.  They are basically the original flashmob organizers.  The best one they did was when they invited people to wear khakis and a royal blue polo shirt, and wander into a Best Buy, pretending to work there and help people with any questions they had.  Naturally, they got kicked out after a while, but that brand of harmless fun is just so appealing.  Gotta participate one day.

Recently, they put up a podium in the heart of New York city with an attached megaphone with a sign that said “SAY SOMETHING NICE.”  And people did, proving that given the right prompt, people can commit random acts of goodness just about anywhere for no reason at all.  The number of people who said “I love you” was particularly surprising.

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badness, life

Not my best month ever

This has not been my best month ever.

me vs. universe. guess which one is me.

We lost a great roommate (High School Friend) to graduate school in another state, and attempted to fill her spot.  Without friends available to do so, we searched on Craigslist with semi-disastrous results (Treacherous Wench backed out the day before she was supposed to move in).  So we gambled and assumed that Diminutive Roommate’s old college roomie would be able to live with us if we could find a place that suited our needs (i.e. a bigger room for her).  Luckily she has decided to live with us (yay!).  Two Saturdays in a row we hunted for apartments all day long, driving around the Westside in my little Fiat, hoping to find an owner or manager desperate enough to offer us a place on the spot because, let’s face it, it was the 20th, and we were running out of time.

We found a place we all loved, they even put in new carpets!  But it took us a while to get our paperwork in.  Finally, with everything properly submitted, a couple nail-biting days passed before we heard that my parents will have to cosign the least to make up for my apparently questionable, previously immaculate credit.

Furious at this blatantly false accusation, I rushed home from Karate Job to check my credit score.  Three days ago, it dropped 55 points.  Fifty-five points.  In one day.  HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN.  Apparently when you get a new car and put in two applications for apartments, your credit gets checked all the fucking time.  I also paid one bill late last week (through no fault of my own THANKS FOR NOTHING, GAP).  Five hard inquiries within a month later, my credit score could not stand the constant verification, and collapsed under the weight of the absurd credit rating system to which it is a tiny, starved, brainless slave.

Now, at age 27, I have to call up my folks and ask them to vouch for me financially, after I just bought the first brand new car my family has ever owned, impressing everyone with my financial prowess.  It’s infuriating, and frankly humiliating.

Now begins the moving process, when I spend all my free time attempting to fit my life into too few boxes in too little time.  Which means… no more World of Warcraft until after the move.  DAMMIT, UNIVERSE, I NEED MY FIX.

Not my best month ever.

P.S. Amidst all this, I’m happy about something: moving is a cleansing process which, while difficult, is always good.  It’s an exercise that needed to happen.  I have too much stuff.  I need to shed all that extra fur and let my summer coat come out.  You should see my summer coat.  Gorgeous.

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