my wheeze temple of steel

now liz has me wondering about something. does that EEE noise i make when i'm happy constitute a guinea pig sound? have i turned into a human guinea pig?!?! there is the case for it, based mostly on my crazy hair cowlicks - err, i mean rosettes - and an aptitude for choking on fresh vegetables until they hacked up into my sinuses and little bits fly out of my nose.

but on to more itching... just kidding! i'd hate to get more hate mail for making other people scratch themselves into anguish and scars. hehehehehe, ain't i a stinka?

there's just one thing on my egotistical mind tonight:
i feel pretty. in fact, i give you ALL permission to feel pretty. pretty like the kind where there's nothing special going on and your hair looks perfect because you have nowhere to go and it's the middle of the night anyway but who cares because you're effortlessly fabulous type of pretty.

have you ever just noticed your own butt and thought, "hell yes, i rock. look at my junk, baby," while craning to stare at it? so maybe it's another body part. maybe it's that bitchin' your fingers fan out to looks elegant. or it could be that you have the perfect feet with cute little toes. today i was sitting on the train when i reached over to scratch my arm and felt the most awesome tricep muscles ever. (without even bumping into my fishbelly arm flaps of waving flag fat!) strutting home was an exercise in kick ass posture. going up the stairs only served to tighten my buns of steel. today i had the body of a supermodel.

until i got home. my swollen feet and dewy tomato head gave way to a change of clothes and some blobbing around. the subsequent scarfing of unsalted cashew bits and cold sliced turkey while standing in front of an open refrigerator led me to believe that the victoria's secret models are in no danger of losing their jobs to me. on the other hand, i thought as i washed it all down with some grapefruit juice straight from the bottle while holding a spoon and thinking of taking a dip into the ice cream, so fucking what. no matter. i'm a supermodel.

watching cartoons as an adult is almost jolting. thanks to the replay button on the DVR thingy you can watch that funny bit a billion times in a row and then skip all the commercials. you can laugh out loud in the stooooopidest ways possible. you can giggle until you wheeze and no can say jack shit about shit. it's a liberating experience. tonight i laughed so hard (thank you for existing, bobby hill) that i think i broke my spleen. in the end when i was grabbing my side it occurred to me that cartoons are great exercise. perhaps i could use them as a kind of laughter pilates. hey you! check out my cartoon abs of steel.

i'm a fucking supermodel. with a sense of humor. and cashews. excuse me now, my fellow supermodels, but i have to go and stare at my butt now.

you look very very pretty tonight, sweetmeat.

random side notes - chapter three

holly and andrey called me from the drive-in on saturday night. they'd gone to see click and got stuck there. apparently, when andrey turned the car on enough to hear the movie over the radio, he also turned it that extra notch to drain the shit outta the battery. they were trapped there with the pink panther. she obviously needed to get plowed while waiting to get a jump/charge and leave. "...branded a fool. what will they say monday at school?" hello grease remake!

my latest running joke - "did i mention that los angeles sucks? really? i did? by the way, did i tell you how sucky it is here?" hehehehehehe.

at last! a quasi celebrity sighting! andrew dice clay at the pizza joint around the corner from where i've been doing this thing on monday nights. (the thing is allegedly some show, but it classifies more as just a thing. trust me on this.) i probably would've missed him entirely had he not been pointed out to me.

me no sleepy this week. derek go bye bye. ugh. me see him soon. pffft. i'm hogging the bed and the couch as much as i can. it's not helping to know that i'm ALL ALONE out here right now. if i fell off a roof or some shit like that it wouldn't matter to one fucking fucker. suckity suck suck sucky.

anger is my cardio. i'm exercising again.

there is no work stability here for me, mostly because i've been dissatisfied with my choices soon after i make each of them. i'll probably end up changing jobs again soon so i can find something that's strictly money with zero commitment. hell why not? i'm already on job number three in this city. my selfishness tells me to just give a polite fuck off to most things. i've never felt less emotionally invested in the world around me, not even when i was suicidal. go selfishness! get me that new job!

my next job interview is in about seven hours. maybe i can talk them up on money.

it is hotter here this week than it is in oklahoma. there is an official case of the vapors going on for me. and there is enough humidity so that i look like a sobbing guinea pig after ten minutes out of the house. i hate being such a head-sweating type of gal.

what noise do guinea pigs make?

workbaby makes me want to barf. she is a constant irritation. even just the sound of her jacked up nasal voice makes me want to buy a machete ( and use it!) for my own personal mental protection. in my humble opinion, most people need a good place to focus their frustration. it's easiest to pick on a political figure, but someone you have to see in person can be just as good of a target.

if only i had a machete. are there knife shows out here?

cnn had an article on their website today that instructs people to "stay away from smokers" due to the whole secondhand thing. does anyone really need a reason to steer clear of an angry girl, or does richard carmona just have it out for me?

fucking fuckers. grrr.

the day in california that didn't totally suck

before you go thinking i'm all whoop-a-dee-doo happy and shit, let me just hold your horses right there, buddy. it didn't totally suck. that's all. there was some air of normalcy; it could be the reason for my less-than-negative attitude.

after realizing that i didn't have to get up and deal with workbaby (the little kid asshole twentysomething girl at my job - but that's a whole other story) or put on respectable looking clothing, i drank a pot of coffee while reading my latest library loan. yes, that's right, the entire fucking pot! the book is a nonfiction called "the average american" and i would recommend it highly as food for thought. it got me to thinking about the connotations of words like normal, average, stereotypical, archetype, and so on. especially interesting in the book were some of the ways in which i found myself relating to being average. some items were a bit surprising, but i always knew that creamy peanut butter was the bomb. go and read it for yourself, even if you're not an american or don't live in the states. it will totally enlighten you on the pop bits of life here.

NOTE: los angeles was thrown out almost immediately from the search! EEE!

but i digress.

yesterday was good because i made money from rating condoms. not just anone can say shit like that, right? as you might know, derek and i have been in a focus group for some new kind of condom, because we thought the study would be neat-o and it gives new meaning to word focus. we went to our final study appointment and collected a big fat check for doing the horizontal mambo with protection and telling someone in a little office about it. after a quick jaunt to the bank (snicker snicker) and our plethora of mailboxes, it was off to the beach for lunch.

let me state here that i keep being under the mistaken impression that SOMETHING in los angeles will turn out to be really fancy. wrong wrong wrong! it's all just a shitpile or a strip mall to me. while some parts of the area have "character" to them, there is nothing glamourous about this place. if you've been through one "oh look at all the shops and restaurants" kind of area in your life, you've already been through los angeles a dozen times over. having said that, we now take you to the foo foo neighborhood of santa monica... or as i keep oafishly pronouncing it: sanny montica.

we ate lunch along the promenade where we spotted celebrities! okay, so there were no celebrities, but if in touch magazine is any indication, you should be able to find a few of them shopping there on occasion. there was some commercial or indie film shooting about ten feet away from our table, but we lost interest after maybe ten seconds. a quick stop into the united colors of benetton (fuck you very much, tankoo. don't make fun) confirmed a few looks of "what are YOU doing in HERE with these little bitty clothes?" how odd. i fit into the ones at the store up in san francisco. does LA preshrink their shit that much? we strolled along the sidewalks near the beach and headed for the sanny montica pier to gawk like tourists. then came the good part - fresh hot churros and standing in one place just listening to the birds and the water and all that was around us.

those of you that have any semblance of who i am know that i'm not a nature nut, but this was the coolest part of the day. not only was there actually a breeze out by the ocean, you could hear distinct sounds in the air. so much of the time hear it's all just blurred into one same noise, but in this spot i could separate the cars from the people from the water from the roller coaster from the everything else. it was much more melodic to hear things as a symphony in cooperation rather than a din of noise.

taking the extremely scenic route back to our 'hood, we stopped at a borders in the evening to browse magazines and have coffee. maegan, a girl i know here, called and invited us out to karaoke at a bowling alley in shitville with some of her work friends. i was in shock. could this be true? is someone calling us to go and do stuff AND meet new people? holy shit! i would probably have driven to vegas just to experience the averageness being invited out for karaoke and drinks. did i sing? hell yes i did. when you're in front of all strangers and you'll probably never see most of them again, you have nothing to lose.

by the way, i advise anyone out there to go and karaoke when out of your normal environment. you can be as absolutely terrible as you want and it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER! practice being an idiot in front of people you'll never see again and you'll lose all sense of shame that you ever had instilled in you.

there is still a nagging thought that keeps bouncing around in my brain, and it is this: i might be able to make friends out here, but they won't be MY friends.

that is no diss to maegan and her bunch or to anyone else. i'm tired of whining all the time about how i hate it here. believe me, it sucks with a capital ucks, but i'm not wasting any more time on the suckage. i just miss some really good parts of my life that i can't, don't, and won't have out here. being seen as adventurous and extraordinary is one thing, but there can be some great happiness in the average parts of your life, too. maybe i'm just craving a little status quo to use as a jumping point - perhaps even a grounding point - for the adventure. it can be good to know that when you fall down, at least the ground will be there to stop your fall.

so it wasn't that i had the best time ever, or that anything out of the ordinary happened. in fact, the day was so comfortably normal that it became fabulous in a very strange way. that book is doing weird things to my noggin, i tell you. what's going to happen to me when i read the next one? ack.

here's to less whining, less suckage; more calm, more ire. more coffee!!!

dorky shit of note in june

you know you don't want the update of why i haven't written. nobody wants that lame ass crap, not even me. instead i'll give you the rundown on activities. here's a list of "la-dee-da, look at me i'm fabulous" things i've been doing over the last few weeks to keep myself entertained. the rating scale is one to five E's (sometimes big but sometimes little), based on how much fun i had doing it.

LA MOCA (museum of contemporary art) - E for the gallery, EEEE for the gift shop. museum gift shops have the coolest shit on earth when you need a special gift or want to have a smile. remember that next time you need a lift.

vidal sassoon academy haircut - EEee on the cut and style. although it was a class setting, which means it took three hours to go through the whole process, i still had fun. they paired me up, in some miraculous way, with the freakiest and dweebiest girl in the room. we practiced our bobby hill voices and talked shit about people in LA. a pretty good scalp massage and it was only 10 bucks to get all this done. only missing one E for the fact that i had to go all the way to santa monica for it.

pink's - EEE on the experience. it sucks standing in line for approximately three days (am i exaggerating or what?) for shitshack artery-clogging food, but you're willing to do it when shitty means good. i am fatter for even smelling the stuff here, and proud of it.

tom lutz/kristine mckenna - EEE for him, E for her. his book in doing nothing looks like fun, and he was pretty laid back for the lecture. i don't think she's cut out to be a moderator, but her interviews in print are good.

canter's - eeeee for the fact that they are open all night and have their own parking. even the bakery and deli are open all night. the table service doesn't suck quite so much as it does at most places in this city, but yes, it is still slow and sloppy. the people at the bakery counter seem to have pulled their heads out of their asses, though, so we picked up some rugulas and other stuff this weekend.

(a quick note on the parking thing - basically anyplace that has its own parking will get an extra E outta me. we make decisions about where to eat based more on the parking than anything else. if we pass by a joint and can't find any spots close, then we may never ever eat there. i'll probably miss out on a few places because of this, or just have to hit them at the right time... like when the moon is in the second house, and jupiter collides with mars.)

harvey pekar/robbie conal - EEE on the lecture part, EEEEE on the audience that attended to get their books signed. i even saw a mullet ot two in the crowd. yeah, so i was expecting more of the dork forest to come out and play that night, but so what? harvey pekar is dorky enough on his own.

coronado island (near san diego) - eeee on the view and the greek place where we ate, E on the stinging in my eyes. i'm pretty sure the hole in the ozone layer is beginning to move itself so as to center over southern california. ouch. where's ben stein with the eyedrops when you need him?

the really big sanrio gift gate at horton plaza in san diego - EEEEE! does anyone else out there think a hello kitty hair crimper totally rocks? fuck off, i had a good time being cute. the crimper didn't come home with us, but purchases were made; they had a lime green tank top with chococat on it IN MY SIZE!

pig barbecue off melrose - e, and they're lucky to get that much. the service was really nice, in comparison, but it was the worst food we've had since getting here. i'm pretty sure the alleged baked beans were refried rosarita canned stuff with onions and ketchup thrown in. let's not even talk about the rest, okay?

next up in my pop culture travels of southern california? perhaps the observatory or the zoo in griffith park. or maybe a trip to universal. i'll keep you updated on all the ham and cheese...

sappy mush alert

if you've been reading you know that i've only shed tears twice since derek announced the move way back in february. close to it many times, yes, but actual blubbering is a stretch for me lately. once was a flipout about traffic and a certain lovely girl having to tell me to calm down so what if i wasn't in the holocaust and i was late to work because holocaust schmolocaust they've all had bad days in traffic since then too, ya know. (very long story - don't ask). the other was over dizzy's proposed vet bill when we first got here. so far, it would seem the only things that can make me crack are being late or broke.

until today.

mabel (aka, kim the crabby kitty) just told me about a wonderful surprise she had all planned out for me. it was designed to cheer me up right after i moved. the only problem? my po box was fucked all to hell. the project got mangled, there are still pieces out there floating in the vortex of post, and she thought all was down the shitter. how wrong she was.

she let out the story to me tonight, with all its intentions and mishaps and kinks in the plan. i burst into tears, but it was happy and grateful sniffling this time. i have never been the recipient of a mass scale random act of kindness planned out by another like this. these are people i have never met in person, sending me good wishes at a time when i feel like poopoo. add to that the mail and messages i've gotten from others that i already knew in person, and uhhhh... well... i'm just fucking stunned.

i miss my peeps, but i don't feel so alone today. tankoo berry mucho, my chickens. i can finally sleep well and content again for a night.

midget mania

there must be something in the system out here that produces a lot of midgets. i see them everywhere now. derek says it's turned me into a midget snob.

in the past week, i've seen a midget couple with a serious hygiene deficit, a midget on the train reading a book, and various random midgets wandering the streets doing everyday stuff. there are so many of them in this town that midgets (and dwarves!) have begun to lose their lustre for me. this happened to me during my stint at tacky's, only the subject of interest was chinese fortune slips. i've since recovered from my fortune cookie slump, but it sucked at the time. where they had once held a coveted place in my wallet because of their value derived from scarcity, i was now barraged with fortunes. suddenly, the premium of those little slips of paper was lost on me. the same thing seems to have happened in this case. i didn't even bother to check out which book the one on the train was reading. the stakes have definitely gone up in sighting the little people.

"the entertainment industry needs midgets," was mary's assessment of why i see so many here. "there's work to be had for being a midget in los angeles, so of course you're going to see more of them out there. they get paid just for being themselves." damn, and i thought it was just the shitty water supply producing a varied genetic strain of people.

alas, woe to me. i must not rely on the rest of the world to aid in the search for better midgets (and dwarves!) to add to the list. to date we've had some great stories of extraordinary sightings, with holly being the clear winner. her tale of the asian cross dressing, french speaking midget earns a special place in all of our hearts. don't feel the pressure to beat holly, but please feel free to give us all your best midget story. really, don't feel bad that it won't be that cool - we heart midgets around here. you can share with me, baby.

melancholy, baby

it was a bad day. the body has a way of telling you when you feel down, and my body has been doing all sorts of jabbering. chattering away with messages of headaches, skin problems, exhaustion, and general ickiness. i finally just passed out (fully clothed) before i could even carry out my plans to go and buy some new pants. maybe i just have an aversion to buying new clothes, but the next thing i knew, i was totally out of it. a few hours later, i woke up just long enough to take off my shoes and place them gently next to my own head. was i cuddling with my shoes in my melancholy? i even missed a call from scott, damnit. in the end, i was too poopy to do much of anything.

the best middle of the night dinner for when you're feeling blue:
two slices of american cheese, v8 juice with hp sauce mixed in, a few pieces of pepperoni, handful of raisins, half a chick-o-stick. does this count as a balanced meal? i think so.

you'd think that indigestion would be added to my body's vocal dissertation on why i'm a little miss fussypants, but i'm actually starting to feel better. it must be because i drank some vegetables. my shuffling around the house is back up to full speed (as fast as mild sock shuffling can go, really) so i can once again ponder the plight of being here in los angeles. oh lucky me.

it did hit me at some point today, while i was still conscious, that we've now made it through three months on our lease. only nine more months to go! in the meantime, i shall continue to engage my survival skills and look for silver linings or some stupid shit like that. i don't even care if we go back home or not. it's not all about being homesick; only part of it is that. i just plain and simple don't appreciate the idea of feeling crappy all the time. my body has spoken and it finished the conversation with an exclamation point! blech i still feel shitty. i've definitely gotta go back to bed soon and stop the insane ramblings of a snot-nosed sickly person.

but if one more fucker hands over that inane line about things being what you make of them, i'm going to do some serious head-cracking. let's see what good they can make of having my foot in their ass. only people who are A)either already comfortable in their setup or B)desperately jealous that you are not boring and they are say that things like how you get out of it what you put into it.

i've been putting my time into it - now i'd just like to get out of it, thank you very much. and fuck off while you're at it.

think i'll go finish off that chick-o-stick.

four thingies of me (from zhen)

we heart zhen. she rocks. but enough about someone else for today. let's get back to my selfish ways for a while. i'm picking up the ball on this one, since i think i was tagged last month and was just too depressed and dummmm to realize it. besides, i'm in a self-indulgent mood. ME ME ME ME ME! i wanna play too! it's four of each, so off we go...

jobs i've had in my life:
contract artist
wheelchair lift mechanic
massage therapist
gift shop owner

movies i would watch over and over:
muriel's wedding
moulin rouge
babe
pee-wee's big adventure

places i have lived:
tulsa, oklahoma
houston, texas
san diego, california
nashville, tennessee

tv shows i love to watch:
project runway
the daily show
so notorious
robot chicken

places i have been on vacation:
las vegas, nevada
boston, massachussetts
chicago, illinois
toronto, ontario

websites i visit daily:
cute overload
wikipedia
craigslist
dictionary.com

my favorite foods:
cheese
red meat
bagels
avocado

places i would rather be right now:
my house in tulsa
playing in the snow
on vacation anywhere cool
with my peeps

things i always carry with me:
cigarettes
fortune cookie fortunes
writing tools
breath mints/gum

there - now you know a little bit more about me then before. and just go ahead and consider yourself tagged, but only if you want to be tagged. blab all about yourself somewhere else, or don't. i'm all into myself right now, so why the hell should i care? me me me. you know you love me. you do, right? please tell me you do. i feel kind of dumpy today and i need the reassurance. you think i'm clever and appealing. i'm an appealing person, damnit! my charisma leaks out all over... down my leg and everything. you love me!

did that work or what? i think i even love me now. woo woo woo.

squeeze my cheeze

tonight was the cheesiest night of all so far. at least it topped my cheesy los angeles list. being so entirely proud of this fact, i must tell you that we dorked out for hours. we moved from regular cheesiness all the way into liquid nacho cheese, into cheez whizziness. eee! what could be so gooey? the sequence of events that led to our fun, of course.

after chatting with nick and grove tonight, i felt the compulsion to go get myself some old-fashioned trash. we love in touch and ok! magazines. we must get our fix! my spirits were up and i needed some good trash, so derek took sally (the gps unit that's supposed to know where everything is here) with us to find it. she promptly took us on a wild goose chase to beverly hills. the store did not look friendly and we were looking for a different one in the first place, so we gave sally a good thrashing and managed to find the spacious, brightly lit borders on sunset. after a fairly disorienting time at borders, we went a-cruising in the cool evening breeze on sunset boulevard. i pose a question here that ties it all together for you. tell me which is more disturbing: spending an hour tooling around town feeling vaguely lost because you've totally forgotten the names of streets, a borders with no chai where all of the employees are wearing the same uniform, or the idea of having lemon custard cake and coffee with cream on the patio at the hustler store? that's not just any old quandary.

actually, the hour drive was pretty nice. as previously noted, evenings make me happy because they're jacket weather. derek let me babble without complaint most of that time and we never truly got lost. we've taken to a-cruising as of late. it gets us out of the house and exploring the geography, even of we don't mingle with the wildlife.

the best part? this is going to sound really fucked when i say it, too. hustler had a decent dessert and some damn good coffee. i've had a string of bad luck in the past few weeks with some diluted watery crapola, so when the boy behind the counter told me to just try it, i felt i had nothing to lose. voila - it was coffee flavored coffee! the other bizarre thing was the friendly demeanor of the joint. most places we go barely even acknowledge our existence, or if they do it's like a swarm of bees pushing us to buy buy buy. being greeted with a smile and a genuine hello (not a nasal-infested "may i help you? want to see things in the case? what are you looking for today?") was refreshing, to say the least. woohoo, the amiably pressure-free experience of hanging out at hustler. who knew?

itch itch itch

they lied to me. it's not beautiful here.

my skin is going to fall off, which might be the best solution at this point. it's still giving me a twitch. my body is completely rejecting all the smog and general "hey, what's that shit?" in the air. even though the shower head is now an irrelevant controversy, i think i'll go back to scrubbing off the first seventy epidermal layers of skin to get clean. damnit. i really do feel clean right after i wash, but it slowly turns to itchfest as the minutes tick by. how sad a sight it is, like a fleabitten kittie kat. perhaps it's some manifestation of a gloriously latent case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. it's not a handwashing, door locking variety; more of a fidget and wiggle type. if this is the case, i could just say to people, "it's not me, it's my disorder," and and jab my fingers into my eye with poise.

as we all know, the more you think about not scratching, the more you itch. also, the more you itch, the more you can't think about anything else but scratching. in an odd confluence of happenstance, the more you scratch, the more you itch in all new places and the cycle goes back to the beginning. it's a safe bet that you're scratching yourself right now just thinking about trying not to be itchy. go ahead - reach on back/up/in there and go for it. feel better?

allegedly successful cures can run from bad to idiotic. yes, i did spend a week slapping my own skin after i got those tattoos. turns out i hit pretty damn hard and i know how to leave a mark. they make all sorts of creams and sprays, too. they cost a lot, they make me feel slimy, they don't work anyway. my best remedy so far is to just abandon all hope at peace, jumping into a fucking icy cold shower. not only do i cease itching, but i also cease breathing or operating any other bodily function. see, it's also a good way to stop that pesky whap-whap-whapping of the mind. your only thought in that instance is "errryyahhhharrggyyywwhrrrrwhhoaaawooof!" you get the idea. clarity comes to you. the body is in shocked paralysis. it's a fabulous noise.

ahhhh... let's all head for the showers.