You birds, always cracking foxy...

4 things that don't suck

1. TMBG. At GAMH tonight (technically last night). Excellent show, as usual. Plus — two more coming.
2. Rob offered to take over most of our work this week, so I can rest and take care of little things. Like, oh, staying married. This is actually possible, too, since phase I of the Papaya Project has theoretically launched. Phase II: The Apology won't get rolling for at least another week.
3. Vitals, by Greg Bear. It seems a little fluffier than some of his stuff. More thriller-y, I think. But it's exactly right for my bruised brain right now.
4. New! Music!
   

Enough technolust for now

First-world greed-o-meter alarms are going off. Time to take some media/gadget money and give it to Doctors Without Borders.

There. Done. Money saved by downloading six Cat Power CDs from emusic (legally, as a subscriber) = money to charity. Browser. Credit card. Click. I may hate my life right now, but I still love living in the future.

10 GB is not sufficient

Cat Power's stuff is all on emusic. I am so foolish for not looking before now.

Want the new iPod.

Happy fucking birthday

The floorboards of my crappy mood this week: Saul would have turned 50 a few days ago. There is no "undo" button, either. I don't care what the song says — suicide is NOT painless, not for us stupid bags of mostly water who have not yet become stupid bags of mostly ash. Take. It. Back. Takeitbacktakeitbacktakeitback. Take it BACK.

Life bad, media good

Life

The magic 8-ball predicts change in my future. I am sad.

Media

Music: Did not go see Cat Power. May not go see TMBG either. Will get my paws on music by the wonderfully Bjork-like singer Emiliana Torrini.

Books: A! Whole! Weekend! of! Rest! with! Reading! Ultimate Cyberpunk, edited by Pat Cadigan. Bedtime stories. Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling. Catching up on the canon. The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People, by Susan Orlean. New-Yorkery goodness.

Movies: Pumpkin, with Christina Ricci. Eh.

BodyArt: It's been almost two years, and I still think I want detail from Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman (Joan Miro, 1940) to be my next tattoo. Took me 5 years before I got my other tattoo, though. So maybe it's not time yet.

Teeeter-Totttter

Finally made it to the gym again (after a full week), and couldn't even lift weights. I am so stiff and sore from being hunched over my laptop in hotel rooms and server closets and you-name-it that all I could do with Cinder was walk on the treadmill a little and stretch a lot.

At least I'm home. And stuff is kinda better. Plus today I got to sit in the hot tub and stretch and read for a while. Thank you dot-com clients from 1999/2000. We wrecked the U.S. economy, but I have a hot tub now. (And I dare to sneer at SUV drivers?)

From the well-I-think-it's-funny department:

The next time a client asks for too many impossible things in a row, instead of getting testy, I'm gonna just start channelling Radical Edward.


Item requested? IM-possible! Search-Reset-Cancel?

I want the Cowboy Bebop Movie soundtrack. How could they have not released a soundtrack album? Foo.

Still coding, too

This is how the code for the papaya project is going this weekend. Here's a partial screenshot of my email inbox. These are test messages, and they aren't even being written by me.



Heh. Waah.

Life...

...sucks a LOT this weekend.

Magazines

Bought a whoooole stack today. Mostly things I hadn't seen before. It's part of the suddenly-being-alone thing. I don't think anybody can focus on one thing exclusively. Even real, legitimate, crises. You brain has to cycle. Even when everything hurts.

So I will keep writing in this place that no-one (thank Bob) is reading. [By now, I figure if you're actually reading this stuff, then please, make yourself comfortable. We could probably be friends or something.]

For me, magazines turn into to-do lists, or, really, to-investigate lists. So this is the magazine-to-new-obsession chart, written as I read.

• Girlfriend Magazine
  • Cat Power, if for no other reason than she has great bangs and a name that's resonant of John Shirley's Catz Wailen. Hey, the music doesn't suck, either. I kinda like "Cross Bones Style". And this hotel room is an easy walk from Tower Records... Ack! She's playing at GAMH next week.
  • Children born Intersexed. Like with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia or Turner Syndrome or AIS or Klinefelter syndrome.
  • Pat Califia is a man now? Jeez. I was such a fan of her writing, how could I not know that he changed? I have to get out more.

• Planet Magazine
  • Cat Power again. Aha.
  • I am not sure I like this magazine very much yet. Good article on Sigur Ros, though.
  • You wanna hear pathetic? I actually like the (presumably) imaginary electronics item pictured in the mother-frelling Absolut (I will not link to it) ad on the back cover of the spring 2003 issue of this magazine. I should have picked up that book on industrial design at Barnes & Nothing earlier today, and satisfied my material lusts that way.

• Modern Nomad
  • Chicken: Self Portrait of a Young Man for Rent. This guy reminds me of one of the first people I know who committed suicide. AC (or JP, if you knew him offline) was a straight junkie who had sex with whoever he could, to feed his habit. When I meet him, he was several years clean (at the advanced age of like 22). He killed himself during a time when we were sleeping together. One of his last acts was to send me an email (well, a BBS message) saying "none of this is your fault". I have always taken him at his word on that.
  • Oh Yeah. She's got your Memoirs of a Geisha right HERE.
  • I am liking this new magazine. I should also be sleeping now, so I can code tomorrow. So the blathering will have to continue later.
  Posted by Liz at 02:15 AM | Comments (0)

Barnes & Nada

I know, I know. Barnes & Noble has crappy mainsteam books, and the sky is blue. But it's the only bookstore I could find near the hotel I'm living in this week. I went in thinking I could pick up some comfortingly dystopian cyberpunk bedtime stories for after I'm done coding tonight. But they had NO John Shirley, NO Linda Nagata, NO Pat Cadigan. I've already read the new William Gibson, too. So I'm catching up on Bruce Sterling and Greg Bear. Plus a kind of interesting-looking History of the FDA. And a copy of Girlfriends Magazine with Buffy, Willow & Tara on the cover.

Also, no bombs falling on my city, and nobody is looting priceless historical treasures anywhere nearby.

Still shoulda had James drop me off at City Lights, though.

On the other hand...

There are worse things than a single marriage threatening to dissolve. From Salon:

After two days of looting, almost all of the museum's 170,000 artifacts were either stolen or damaged. . . .

In the museum's collection were items from Ur and Uruk, the first city-states, settled around 4000 B.C., including art, jewelry and clay tablets containing cuneiform, considered to be the first examples of writing.


The DJ in my head is having epileptic fits. Right now I have TMBG on perma-repeat. "Don't Let's Start", to be precise:

No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful.

First

First (only? of many? of all the rest of them?) night without Jason. This is the thing that is happening right now. I know I was asking a lot of him, me with the grief and the stress and fretting and the being generally insane. And I asked too much, apparently. And now I'm here, in this dumb hotel room. Alone.

The bizarre thing is, I still did our taxes, and I'm still working on the papaya project, so we'll hit something approximating our deadline. Because these are Things that Have to be Done. So I'm doing them. Like a good little sentient robot.

Let's just say I'm in shock now.

Kaboom.

Um. Huh. My life just blew up. This may be a short-lived bloglet. Or maybe it'll be normal again in a week and I can go on posting irrelevant things to imaginary people.

Stickintosh

I might be done stickering my new laptop. Ya think?



(click for big image)

The cool little round stickers come from mushycat.com. The others come from all over.

Oh, for Allah's sake

Saddams's son's lair is all over the news today.

Prozac, AIDS test kits, heroin, hookers? That's nothing.

But stolen school supplies sent by UNICEF to his country's children? The monster!

I think the evil-lair-in-a-box crew got a leeeeeetle over-excited, myself.

Youth In Asia

Later today we go see Cowboy Bebop. I don't care if it's going to suck or not, actually. It's just fun to say. Like Super Junky Monkey or Hokkaido Popsicle.

Mama was a rock-n-roll band

Favorite new CD this week: Kelly Hogan's Beneath the Country Underdog. Her cover of 'Papa was a Rodeo" is a thing of beauty. And I'm not much of a country fan, neither.

Shiny

Hey, neat. A Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) fan/news blog that's pretty decent.

Involuntary Maven

Finally! We had people over for media marathon, plus the snacking and the laughing and the talking. V. Nice. I think I helped get people onto science-y talk early on, with ranting about some neurosci articles I'been reading, and that kind of kept the convo level interesting. For me, anyhow.

Except I got a little too maven-y. But there are so many things to show and tell and share and play. Reiko is constantly sore and taking baths, because she's training to walk a marathon. So I was showing her the amazing Lush massage bars and bath bombs — especially since they have a store in SF now. No more mail order from Canada.

Then, okay, I might have pressed a book on Reiko and James, but it was relevant to the conversation. And Rob asked to borrow the John Shirley book laying on the counter. And Joey was clearly bored and fidgeting when Jason started ranting politics, so I handed him the paperback Get your war on.

Also, it's possible I coerced people into watching Ghost World. Just a little. But they hadn't seen it.

Finally, Rob asked me if I was getting commission from any of these companies. And I tried to stop, I did. But it's that Maven thing. Not just obsessing about a million things, but wanting to share them all. The media I did push was nothing compared with what sprang to mind.

The stupid thing is, I would love it if people did that to me. I mean, I try to back way off if the person doesn't seem interested. But for the good stuff? Finding out that a friend has known about something/someone great for years and hasn't shared it just pisses me off. When I found out Rob knew about Connie Willis for years before I did, I wanted to smack him.

Maven? Otaku? Total bore? Source of neat info? Or just bad hostess? I think I'll never know.

Introspective and emotional, in that special sleep-deprived way. Oh, and a great link.

Owwwwwwwwww my brain. No sleep for 38 hours and counting. Plus in-person meetings today, including driving and everything.

Large corporate clients == long corporate meetings. During which I sit and offer techie perspectives and feel uncomfortably much like a visiting cultural anthropologist. I'm learning the local customs, and can mimic even the most incomprehensible behaviours fairly well. But in no way are these my tribe.

So who are my tribe? I have husband Jason, friends Rob, James, Bruno. Plus Mona and the loadies when there's partying to be done. And old friends who have moved away and those kinds of friend-of-friend accquaintances that you like plenty but don't know well.

Still, last year I dropped down below some magic number. Saul died, and Missy dumped me as a friend. And now, despite being plenty busy, and in contact with good people, and essentially happy, I am also, on some fundamental level, lonely.

Which I guess explains why I'm writing messages to my imaginary friends out there on the internet. It's like praying, for atheists.

Obligatory link: Phoebe Gloeckner. Another longtime favorite who is just getting some shiny new press. You go click now. Scoot!

Future Bible Heroes

Gah! I can't believe I don't have tickets to see Future Bible Heroes at Bimbo's tonight.

Except, deadline. Big client. Dinner obligation already. But it's Stephin Merritt. Stephin Merritt. Of The Magnetic Fields. Only the Cole Porter of our time, is all. Rob and I seriously considered flying from SF to NY to see The Magnetic Fields' performance of "69 Love Songs".

And I haven't slept since sometime yesterday morning. Stupid unevolved primate brain anyhow. Why do I need sleep? Where's my provigil? Where's my hovercar?

Aw, man...

We are all reading this by now, right?

Get your war on

I want to have like ten thousand of its babies.

Where's my toolbelt?

My business cards say "software engineer" and I'm self-employed. So lots of my life involves negotiating bids and stuff with clients. Who want things. BIG things. With, you know, features. And they need to make budgets. And they need to know things NOW.

I finally nailed it yesterday. THIS is the conversation I have, again and again, and will keep having. It's as though I were a building contractor, and somebody has called me for a bid on a building.

Me: Joe's Build-o-rama, may I help you?

Them: I need you to build me an office building. Right away.

Me: I'd be happy to help you. Now, what kind of building were you...

Them: I need to know the costs and timeframe up front. Your resume here says you've got ten years' experience, and my friend Bobby hired you last year, so that'll be no problem, right?

Me: Actually...

Them: You know, an Office Building. Windows, walls, elevators, maybe a roof or a parking garage. So what's your bid?

Me: Well, maybe we could spend some time figuring out some of the details. For example, how large is the lot? Do you know anything about the zoning for the area? Were you thinking about two stories? Twenty?

Them: (sighs) Fine, let's say between 5 and 15 stories. And I definitely want those retro moldings around the windows. And carpet, but not that tacky hotel patterned stuff — gives me a headache. Maybe something in a kind of dusty blue?

Me: If we could just...

Them: So what's your price? Can we get it done by June?

Me: Maybe if we sat down together and started going through some of the...

Them: Listen, what's all this hemming and hawing? What kind of builder are you, anyhow?



It is possible that I need a vacation.

In your dreams, pal

This guy, interviewed in New Scientist, says he can fix yer depression right up in a day. It's all that worrying and fretting you do. Gives you the blues. Introspection is bad for you. And that low serotonin thing? It's a side effect, not a cause. So snap out of it, already.

Glad that's been cleared up, then. <koff>