ASSessed

recently i filled out a health assessment on a health and wellness website. i've had to build a site map for the media kit. i'll also write for it. i did it solely as research, to know what the tool might offer advertisers (gross).

one of the questions was "Do you wish for (or think about) death?"

what kind of question is that? i'd like to know. i mean, why are those questions combined? everyone thinks about death, but wishing for it...isn't that something separate?

not for me.

looking at death as a relief or a freedom is the only way to deal with it as the ridiculously cruel thing we were born to do. and that is something i wish for (sometimes) and think about (at least once a day).

Songs I won't play for my friend who's grandmother just died

1. Sleepy California by Her Space Holiday

goddamit, this song kills me EVERY TIME.

sleepy california

I used to think that I knew
My way around this town
But I'm always getting lost
Since you're not around
I never thought that I would say this
But I miss my mom
Even though for all those years
We didn't get along
And when I stop to think about it
I guess we were the same
Too stubborn to apologize
Too filled up on rage

I wish she felt young again
When everything was new
When her father held her hand
And said, "There's nothing you can't do"

And then I woke up to a phone call
Right On Christmas day
It said, "Your grandmother is dying
In a painful way
Her lungs are filling up with fluid
Even as we speak
The doctor said that if she's lucky
She'll make it 'til next week"
I had one last chance to see her
Right before I moved
But I didn't end up going
I used some lame excuse

I hope that she's not scared
Lying there alone
I hope she hears her husbands voice
Telling her she's coming home

It's just Sleepy California
But I just hope they know
It's just Sleepy California
How much I really care
It's just Sleepy California
How I want the best for them
It's just Sleepy California
Even though I'm hardly there

"Fling on an Addidas Hoodie and Boogie Woogie With Me"

tomorrow my friend w. is throwing me a bachelorette party. i was dancing while driving all the way home from work today because of this. my ipod was shuffling the best possible songs for a friday after work. i even got caught air drumming and singing to lady sovereign's big crazy-fun dance hit "Hoodie." "dance hit" reminds me of ABBA, and lady sov is...well...the opposite of ABBA. but it's infectious as hell and made me shake my booty so hard in the car that i felt "caught" at a red light by my neighboring driver. i looked over mid-tempo with my mouth wide open, and there he was. watching. i just turned away back towards the road in front of me and picked up my phone, nervously pretending to do something with it.

happy happy happy from the music. happy.

along the way, it seemed every song i heard would be perfect for the party i'll have with my oldest and closest friends + one kickass new soulsister. jesus, did i just say that? Under normal conditions using that term would be reason enough to be shot by...me. but it really fits her.

the playlist i made when i got home is here:




if i sound terrifically boring it could be because i took three muscle relaxants tonight. if mentioning that makes me sound paranoid, it's because i also smoked some pot resin, the poor man's hash. in my case it's the lazy, midlife, bordering-on-loser lady's hash.


carry on.

Patti Smith and Jim Carroll

wow, look at this cool picture i found of patti smith and jim carroll circa 1969. i should have known they hung out together at some point.

cool factor overload!

Thanks

at work, for a company-wide thanksgiving greeting, i have to turn in some words, some quote, of what i'm thankful for.

huh. what am i thankful for.

how about well-made sandwiches, tall black boots, funny songs, medium-hair cats, paintings with typography, coffee, aspirin, when things pay off, brand-new magazines...guy.

to begin with.

been a while

asshole
work has been stretching my brain. i found the asshole at my new job, and good news! it's the other writer. didn't expect that. she's mean. i will deal with it, but how disappointing.

last week i began work on a website that will be huge. the founder is an AOL co-founder. i had to learn about information architecture in a day and get this project moving. after i figure out the site map, i get to write for it. so strange. i'm really workin' hard for the money, no kidding.

airplane
guy has been on the phone for days trying to get us some airline tickets to bali. it's unbelievable how much time he's spent on the phone negotiating days and times and layovers and launching points to get the best possible price and hopefully, cross fingers, get us some business class seats. it may not happen and that will be fine. i wish i had never thought i could fly like fancy people in the first place though. it's a 23 hour flight. i'll just get a lot of pills if i have to travel as a pretzel. i have a feeling that as soon as the damn things are bought, we're going to be very excited, and it really doesn't matter how we get there.

saturday drive
today was nice. we got up and went to target to get a towel rack and then just went driving. ended up on a country road north of novato and kept going. stopped off at a cheese factory and ate brie and bread. rolled on out of there and headed south. what do you want to do? guy asked me. i thought for a second and said the first thing that came into my mind: I've never been to Bolinas.

turns out Bolinas is an unbelievably cool and heartfelt little town. i'd heard about how people who live there remove the exit sign off Highway 1 that would lead tourists into town, so not many non-locals have even seen it, and it shows. we wouldn't have found it easily without the GPS machine. off highway 1, curvy roads reach a beach that has a view of the City. like mounds of white rubble cascading over hills. we were very surprised to see that. all the houses are funky/shingled/artsy. my favorite kind. it feels like a hidden paradise pretty much. "so, is this the town that we should start visualizing living in?" i asked guy. "maybe." There is one sign as you begin to reach town that reads:

You are now entering a socially conscious
and nature-loving town.

sounds pretty hippie, but the vibe is more Relaxed Surfer.

we love it there. i wonder if we'd make new friends there. i imagine they'd be avant-garde and named Isaiah or Alice.

i hate learning new things

most people "love learning new things" just like they "love walking on the beach at sunset" or whatever else people say to make themselves seem interesting.

i hate learning new things.

first, there is the introduction period, say like, in a new job. i'm excited, i'm happy, i just got this bitchen new job that i'm pretty sure i can do. in fact, getting it has made me feel like some kind of superwoman. i'm on a high for days. i get all hyped up thinking, "i've fooled them again!"

and then "training" sets in.

for someone like me, who is either a)self-taught, especially in academics or b)painfully stressed out by the knee-jerk reaction against a nasty instruction style formed at an early age...and/or both, "training" is a horrible, painful nightmare to go through.

fortunately by now, i've gone through enough "training" from my myriad of jobs, that i can kind of recognize the headache as it takes hold, rather than go through a freakin' breakdown before understanding what is happening, the way i did in my 20s.

it sucks, nevertheless.

and somehow i don't think the training nightmare is going to hit me again! maybe that detail will become apparent by the time i retire.

guy asked me, "why do you hate learning so much?"

my immediate answer is most likely the most honest, and that is, "The Pressure."

when i was a kid and i had to ask for help with homework, i had to ask my dad. why not mom, who was so much kinder, and empathetic? she "doesn't remember," as i was told at the time. SO, it was dad, for any problem at school, which quickly produced five thousand extra personal problems for every word problem he screamed at me.

if i didn't figure out whatever academic issue i was having immediately after asking for help, then the instruction was yelled. with extra words thrown in along the lines of "WHY CAN'T YOU DO THIS?!"

"thanks, dad!" because even though it feels pathetic to blame adult problems on one's parents, it is irrevocably, usually, their faults. until we fix it ourselves as adults, that is. how long does that take?

i'm still trying to fix it. today, i did not cry when my creative director asked me in a confrontational way why i'd "say that", over and over like a round of bullets. but i still got so stunned and put on the spot, that i could only give her a satisfactory answer 2 times out of 3. it really doesn't help that i don't actually know the correct grammatical terms to defend why i write or don't write something, or that she was on percocet for toe surgery, this plays against me again, when i can't perfectly answer the "why" question, right away.

learning. it's a stick in the nose.

black francis rises again

it's true. he has finally tapped back into something very closely resembling the magic that sprang from his bloodstream. like a hard fall down the stairs, during the reign of the Pixies. sudden. tragic. fast. hard.

his new record, Bloodfinger, gave me the same heart palpitations in the first two songs that the white stripes' Icky Thump did a few months ago.

bass-driven, with lyrics reminiscent of the pixies ("I stood on the dock and you got on your knees / Grand Marnier and a pocket full of speed / We did it all day till we started to bleed”), the memory of which he is obviously pursuing, this is the first frank black black francis record i have given the time of day in over a decade. maybe that's my problem, being close-minded. i saw him under the moniker, Frank Black and the Catholics once, and it was really, truly boring. i didn't even try after that...until now.

maybe charles' insistence on changing his name back to the old and recording anew, has as much to do with the audience's memory and reaction to his brilliance as his own. perhaps this was made really apparent with the pixies movie he panned. unfortunately, and i'm sure this is flat-out offensive to him...but unfortunately, kim deal is necessary to his perfectly unbelievably stirring sound. like two kids who want their parents to get back together, there is no fan who doesn't know these two need each other.

too bad kim's so busy perfecting her perl stitch on her mom's front porch to get back to destroying the music world in the pixies' signature, earth-shattering way.

The toilet and Polly Jean

just dropped my phone into the toilet.
it's been disinfected.

i was talking to guy, and had the phone cradled in my neck while measuring the wall behind the toilet for a towel rack. i guess he was at the store.

it's shocking when you see your phone in the toilet. went right down. hard to get out. seems to be stuck on vibrate. is out of commission.

after disinfecting, turned on the newly purchased new record by pj harvey.

more on that later. (it's beautiful) (white chalk)