CodeNameSarah

The future is unclear.

2010-02-22T13:05:00.002-06:00

So, Blogger is discontinuing my preferred method of blog publishing. What this means for this journal, I'm not sure. I might switch blog software, or I might scrap the whole website altogether. I mean, I barely write here anymore -- and though I have a new project about to launch, I'm still not sure how or where I will put it on the web.

In short, my web future is unwritten. The only thing I'm sure of is how angry I am with Blogger. That's pretty much it.

Anyway, I won't leave the four of you reading this hanging. I'll figure something out by the end of the week and post accordingly.

Happy Monday. And so forth. Carry on...

Sweet philosophical meanderings.

2009-12-02T10:06:00.003-06:00

I read somewhere (Twitter, probably) that Coke Zero tastes like "existential bankruptcy." Well, having finally tried it, I can only agree.

But...it does taste more like Coke Classic than Diet Coke. So I guess that means that Coke Classic also tastes like "existential bankruptcy," but Chapter 7 existential bankruptcy ("real" bankruptcy) as opposed to the Chapter 13 ("reorganization") bankruptcy of Coke Zero.

Your life is filled with terrible emptiness either way. I think I'll stick to water, then.

(Sometimes I like to take a metaphor not to its logical conclusion, but much farther than it should ever go. You're very welcome.)

Those "perfect afternoon" blogs.

2009-11-11T14:05:00.003-06:00

You people, with your stupid little blogs filled with pictures of your stupid "perfect afternoons." You can suck it.

You know who you are.

You're the people who go to the state fair and take pictures of funnel cakes. The folks who go apple picking and laugh and laugh and take pictures of everything, pictures that are "just so." It's infuriating. You're the people who somehow manage to make and do everything by hand, despite having seventy jillion children under the age of nine -- all while cataloguing it and sharing it with your adoring fans online.

You, with your perfect autumn light. You, with your sunny dispo-fucking-sition. You -- you most of all -- with your simple, glorious recipes and seemingly endless free time.

I hate all of you.

Oh, I'm going to keep reading, of course. But I'm still going to hate you, all the same.

TMI Tuesday?

2009-11-10T17:07:00.005-06:00

Okay, internet. My secret fantasy is actually real, and now I'm completely disappointed. I had been fantasizing about a Twitter trend that couldn't possibly exist: #TMITuesday. Like #MusicMonday and #FollowFriday, it could perk up the workday and allow great swathes of people to participate with their favorite faceless swarm of cyber-citizens in a new way: A massive tasteless oversharing with strangers. (Like that's new -- hah!)

But a quick Twitter search revealed that it does in fact exist (thought it doesn't trend very high), is mostly about farting, and isn't as amusing as I had hoped.

Here are a few examples I never had the guts to tweet:

My vagina is weeping...weeping tears of blood. #TMITuesday (And only 58 characters, not bad -- easily retweeted.)
I dreamt I pooped a 12 foot turd the other night, but I don't think I've ever topped 18 inches IRL. #TMITuesday (Bam. Just like that I'm as funny as Sarah Silverman. Which is not that hard, but still...)
I don't know how I will pay for holiday gifts this year and I'm thinking about suicide. This is a cry for help, and also for cash. #TMITueday (See, they don't all have to be scatological.)

I am so very, very disappointed. Please consider this post a cry for help, and also for cash. Just joking. But not really. Fuck, internet. You get worse every day.

"Something more than mockery."

2009-11-06T15:17:00.002-06:00

This morning I woke up to "Disintegration" by The Cure. When I got dressed, I donned my former teenage uniform: A black t-shirt with a denim skirt and black sneakers. And then I proceeded to put on some crazy eyeliner and bright red, Robert Smith colored lipstick (unsmeared).

Also, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go home and watch some "Twin Peaks."

So apparently it's 1990 today. What the hell? Is this what a mid-life crisis feels like?

My haircut broke a record.

2009-10-14T03:38:00.003-06:00

Or rather, assisted in the breaking of a Guinness World Record. I was number 213 of 349 haircuts -- and it was actually a really nice cut. And fun, too.

At least Bob Cratchit had a lump of coal.

2009-10-08T20:22:00.002-06:00

I am a valued employee. (Except of course that I'm not.)

A while ago I tweeted about the TWO SERVERS on my desk, right? I'm not sure I ever posted a follow-up, but it took two months to remove them. TWO MONTHS. One month for each server. (Apparently.) Now the lights are burnt out in my windowless, cell-like office...and no one is fixing them. And I've let people know. Repeatedly. But the glow from my monitor has been deemed light enough for working, at least for me.

I am being moved next month to a new location, and while I had been looking forward to this move -- you know, fewer people eating at my desk, maybe, and even the possibility that I might have a more ergonomic desk set-up -- but I've found out that it will be even smaller, equally windowless, will still contain two commercial freezers, and I won't even have a desk. A DESK. I won't even have a desk!

They are seating me at a stainless steel prep counter.

Let that sink in for a minute.

A stainless steel prep counter.

That's totally, like 100% ergonomic, right? And won't say, be freezing cold at all times, either. Right?

I'm beginning to wonder if I will be allowed to have a chair.

Here's the thing. I write the checks. I compile the financial statements. I am a pretty important part of the business (or I should be) -- no one else does my job, and when the last bookkeeper quit without notice, it took six weeks to find a replacement. But it's like they don't want me to come to work. They make it as difficult (and as physically uncomfortable) as possible to work for them.

And yet I still go to work. It's boggling, isn't it?

Your own personal back hoe?

2009-09-28T08:57:00.008-06:00

I recently saw a commercial for a personal back hoe. (Really.)

At first I thought it was absurd. But I gave it a little thought -- the commercial was very convincing -- and I was soon persuaded that everyone needs one...even apartment dwellers.

Because how else are you going to discreetly bury the bodies of people you kill in the middle of the night? I mean, you don't want to borrow a neighbor's backhoe for that, not at 3:00 a.m.

That would be an embarrassing conversation, I'm sure.

I shouldn't be a spokesperson, either.

2009-09-22T16:29:00.002-06:00

I forgot my book the other day, so I spent my lunch break flipping through an old "Parade" magazine I found in the break room. It had a little blurb about how Christian Slater was working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on an initiative to reduce the high school drop out rate, because he had been a high school drop out himself and felt very strongly about the whole thing.
All I could think of was this: Do you think a celebrity who dropped out of high school and became famous and successful anyway is really the role model for kids who might drop out of school?

Okay, his "success" is debatable by Hollywood standards, but he looks pretty damned successful compared to unemployed roofers and people working at Taco Bell. I might get behind this thing if he was working on an initiative to encourage adult drop outs to get a G.E.D. (like Slater recently did). That makes sense. But I don't get just standing up and saying, "Hey, kids, I'm a high school drop out who went on to make such films as 'Broken Arrow' and 'Hollow Man II' -- don't be like me! Stay in school!"

Wait, maybe that is persuasive. Nobody's too proud of "Hollow Man II."

Never mind.

P.S.
I have a G.E.D. I am not dissing that at all, though I should add -- in the spirit of full disclosure -- that I didn't drop out. I was homeschooled and went to college early.

Narrative required.

2009-09-16T13:45:00.002-06:00

I have to make up a story for everything, it seems.

For instance, my partner and I drove by the house on Woodhead with the dancing bear topiaries the other night. The bears are usually decorated for whatever holiday is current: Bunny ears for Easter, flags for July 4th, masks and pumpkins for Halloween, and so on. But the bears are currently bare, and I remarked to Lennox that I hoped the kids weren't getting too old for it. I said I would miss the decorations -- and that I really looked forward to them each holiday.

Lennox agreed, but just shook his head as I went on to re-enact an imagined conversation between the mom and the two kids (who appear to be gradeschool aged, as I have seen them in the yard). My performance included the phrases "Seriously lame" and "Do you know how hard it is to be the kid from the 'Bear House,' Mom? The 'Bear House'? This is Montrose, Mom, do you know what a 'bear' is?"

So, you know. I require narrative. And where it is absent, I create it -- from shrubberies, when necessary.

The long Lynchian walk home.

2009-09-03T17:48:00.003-06:00

I am almost sure I just walked through a random scene from a David Lynch movie:

Vague sense of melancholy as I stared at passing cars.
Large white poodle, barking wildly behind a huge picture window.
Forlorn, discarded goldenrod feather boa lurking in a shrubbery, a mystery never to be solved.

I mean, it wasn't from a specific film -- it simply had the feeling of the Lynchian oeuvre. You know? At least I didn't find an ear on the way, or get taken to Club Silencio by my (imaginary?) girlfriend...

Never mind. More of a fleeting thing, open to interpretation. As all Lynchian things should be.

Choose your own "Blade Runner" adventure.

2009-08-27T14:55:00.005-06:00

I recently had a hankering to watch "Blade Runner" again. I always liked it, being a PKD fan and all, but I was never quite so, um, obsessed with it as people tend to be.

The problem is that whenever I want to re-watch it, I become paralyzed by the choices. Do I watch the original director's cut? The working print cut? The all-new-super-fabuloso cut? There are like seven versions of that movie, and I never know which one to choose. (Are they all even available to choose from?)

I tried to find some sort of online "choose my 'Blade Runner' adventure" website, where you could click yes or no on things like "Unicorn dream sequence?" or "Shitty opening narration?" and then it would just tell you which version to watch. Someone should go out there and create that page, just as a public service. Seriously.

Still, I guess the ultimate choice would be to eschew the movie altogether and read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep again.

Maybe I'll just do that.

The tweet that shook the world.

2009-08-19T13:22:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I spent a good deal of the last week insulting William Shatner because he blocked The Bloggess on Twitter. It seems that pissing off people who love The Bloggess is now officially a Bad Thing To Do (tm), as we pulled together in an army and roasted Bill 'til he caved...and unblocked her.

It built gradually, but still happened pretty quickly. One day you're fine, and the next thing you know you have a code name* and you're in The Matrix, and then...victory. We didn't even have to wait four years to achieve our objective (unlike the Wachowski brothers).

And it'll be a huge BYOH** party in Zion tonight, let me tell you. Success is awesome.

Honestly, I haven't had this much fun on the internet since 1999 or so. And that is a high compliment to the members of the Bloggess Army. Also, it's a relief to know that there are so many witty people out on the web. It was beginning to feel like a giant infomercial out there.

So, thanks again to the Bloggess Army -- and a special thanks to William Shatner for being a sport about it. Really, Bill -- all my best to you, too!

*I am Lt. Ellen Ripley, from the Alien franchise.

**That'd be "Bring Your Own Hooker" -- which was kind of how this all started...

Coincidence?

2009-08-07T09:48:00.006-06:00

Someone posted a link to H. G. Wells's "Man of the Future" on Twitter last night, and is it just me? Or does it look terrifyingly like Helium, of Strindberg + Helium fame? I know we all seem like variations on Strindberg now, but maybe one day we really will evolve into Helium-like beings -- cupcakes and all...

(Also, I had completely forgotten how damned funny those cartoons were. I feel certain that I will spend the rest of the day saying "Decay! Decay, decay, decay!")

Edited to add: Mac Tonnies posted the original link. Sorry -- I had saved it, but had forgotten the source.

My desk, my oasis.

2009-08-06T10:26:00.004-06:00

I have two part-time office jobs, and one of the issues I have to deal with is shared and/or inadequate work space. "Artistic temperament" aside, I am actually an organized worker -- and I adhere to some pretty minimalist standards for my workspace.

For instance, here is my desk at Job #1.
I took this photo right when I walked in the door on a Monday morning. The desk is clear and ready for work. Everything to the right of the pencil sharpener is my space.

Here's a closer look.
See how tidy everything is? Adding machine, stapler, tape, tissues, calendar, weird albino rat under the monitor. (There's also a stained glass heart hanging under the window -- it's not an inhuman workspace. I have tchotchkes.) I stopped using a pen cup years ago, because people tend to view these as public property and will take your writing utensils at whim. I keep my supplies in a drawer: one mechanical pencil, one black pen, one red pen, one click eraser, one Sharpie, and one highlighter. I absolutely don't need anything else. There are also binder clips and paper clips in my drawer, along with a legal pad and a single square of sticky notes. The second drawer is for work in progress, and the third drawer is where I keep my backpack.

Everything has a place, it's easy to access, and there's nothing extra I don't use. It's pretty close to perfect. I admit that the paper storage issue is a non-issue here -- the office is paperless, and the only paper I deal with is either scanned and shredded or returned to clients.

I have had trouble with temps using the desk during tax season, though -- but only because the desk was so reliably neat they thought no one actually used it.

So, you know, you might think that my inherent anal qualities might object to the mismatched furniture, or something like that. I don't really care about that in this case. So what's the issue?

Well, here is the other side of the room.
See that tiny bit of grey countertop to the right by the chair? That's the end of my desk.

I used to share this space with another employee. Here's where her desk used to be.
Chaos. I work in chaos. I think my intense neatness is partially a response to work environments just like this -- because this is not the messiest place I've worked. It's not even the messiest place where I currently work. I cannot post pictures of that workspace, because it sort of makes me want to cry.

And there's a little window into my workday for you...

Cancel the milk carton picture.

2009-07-22T09:32:00.002-06:00

Have I really been AWOL for a month? Really? I guess that's what happens when you start working on your screenplay again.

And Twittering. Endlessly Twittering.

Soon: A post about desks, minimalism, and how coworkers make me want to smash things.

Requiem for a record player.

2009-06-15T09:01:00.013-06:00

I once attended a literary event at a record shop -- an actual record shop, though they also sold CDs. Now, you might clean your house for company, and you might expect a business to tidy its restroom before hosting an in-store event. You might expect it, but...it might not happen. What you may find is that you are expected to relieve yourself in the middle of a room filled to the brim with broken turntables.

Like an elephant graveyard strewn with massive bones, these ancient record players stretched to the rafters, encroaching upon even the toilet itself. The sight of it has haunted me for years -- to the point that it has become a frequent background to my dreams. It was so surreal, to see hundreds of turntables packed into that restroom -- I would almost believe I had dreamt it in the first place, if I didn't have other witnesses.

The sight of all of those dead machines prompted a memory of my first record player -- a portable printed all over like denim fabric -- and realized that I didn't know what had happened to it. Was it buried somewhere in another record store restroom? Hidden in the dusty recesses of someone's garage? Moldering away at the bottom of a landfill? I had loved it intensely, but I replaced it with a hot pink cassette tape player without a second thought.

Each of these turntables had their own stories of abandonment, I'm sure -- each one unique and slightly sad.

When I left that place -- that haunted place place where turntables go to die -- I felt like I had been let in on a secret that I didn't particularly want to know. There are no last rites for record players, no ceremonies of attrition for those of us who walk away from them. There is only a room filled with mute, broken turntables.

I hope I fare better in the afterlife.

An Explanation.

2009-05-06T17:08:00.002-06:00

"An Explanation"

We call it

Western Zen:
Empty, well-styled rooms --
Opulent, but minimalist.

Airy, with perfect
Clean lines,
And hidden electrical jacks.

Hand-picked greenery,
Hand-made pottery --
Decor pornography
For the discerning.

But things change,

For now we face
The shambling dead,
We have been overrun
By grave-ripe corpses.

They have upset
The bowl of designer rocks,
And left cemetery stains
Upon the eco-friendly cork flooring.

I apologize.

I did not know
It would be
Such a bad day
To schedule
The "Dwell" photo shoot.

Eavesdropping is fun.

2009-05-04T11:46:00.002-06:00

We went out to breakfast Saturday, where we overheard two young brothers arguing as we were being seated.

As we passed their table, the younger one said, "Hey, that guy has a mustache." (Sort of random.)

"SO? I have a mustache," said his brother, who was maybe 9. (Defiant.)

"No, you don't." (Utter dismissal.)

"Well, I have the shadow of a mustache." (Very matter of fact.)

That prompted a snort and the sarcastic retort: "See ya later, SCIENTIST."

Now, I have no idea what part of their previous conversation explained both the vitriol behind "scientist" and its connection to mustaches, but it was said with such snide fervor that I have been thinking about it ever since.

In fact, I almost said "See ya later, scientist!" to the cat as I left this morning. But she probably would have bitten me, so I refrained.

They'll put the "SCA" in "scare."

2009-03-24T16:45:00.004-06:00

I'm having a bizarre irrational fear today. I'm afraid that one day we will be besieged by reports of ghosts dressed in medieval garb...but seen in the United States. These reports will be dismissed out of hand ('cause, you know, not a lot of medieval crackers running around Tennessee or wherever, far flung Viking explorers aside), but they will be real ghost sightings -- sightings of the spirits of renaissance festival performers and SCA members!

These things keep me up at night...

Twitter, twitter, tweet, tweet.

2009-03-04T15:38:00.002-06:00

I am starting to love Twitter in the same way that I love haiku and other counted syllable poetic forms.

It makes me pare down my message to 140 characters. I must be succinct, pithy, and entertaining...all the while conveying what I originally intended to say. Challenging, but great fun.

So, feel free to check my Twitter page, and follow me if you are so inclined. It is far more entertaining that this blog, I assure you.

And pithier.

Hugh let the dogs out.

2009-02-08T10:34:00.003-06:00

I have been going to bed early since I got so sick in December, and though I have been getting much better the early-to-bed (and its early-to-rise sidekick) have stuck with me.

Suffice to say that I am not normally up before 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Since I was up early, I decided to catch up on my e-mail. My desk at home is right by a window with a good view of the sidewalk across the street, and I am used to seeing a good number of dog walkers.

I am not, however, used to seeing so many dog walkers dressed in pajamas.

I don't mean lounge wear, or super casual knit wear. I mean pajamas. Actual pajamas. (And in one case, fuzzy slippers.)

But the icing on the cake was the Hugh Hefner look-alike in red silk patterned pajamas topped with a burgundy velour robe. He looked like he was ready for a romp at the Playboy mansion, not just up for trotting two energetic puppies around the block.

Crazy!

Lightning does strike twice...

2009-01-28T15:45:00.002-06:00

"Tonka on Toilet Paper"

Quilted, soft, or rough,
The fate of the unspared square
Is always the same:
Circling its porcelain grave
An unmourned, frail paper wraith.

The rare poetic utterance.

2009-01-07T14:19:00.002-06:00

I recently watched "Run Lola Run" for the umpteenth time (I have lines memorized in German...and I don't speak German -- that's how many times I've seen this movie), and this little senryu came tumbling out:

Suppositional
Rashomon, only German
With a chick running.

Do I get bonus points for using up an entire line's worth of syllables on a single word? I should.

So, I fail. Again.

2009-01-02T18:53:00.008-06:00

Fuck, fuck, fuck-a-doodle fuck-fuck. Another fucking self-imposed deadline missed. I don't know why I bother, frankly...

Anyway, secret project is still a go, but start date is postponed due to lingering illness and lack of proper equipment.

Fuck.

[...this post brought to you by the letter "Y" and the number "fuck."]

P.S.
I identify with this comic so much it's scary.