Echo

Quote of the Day:

I love it when Michael recites both sides of a conversation that never happened.

-Brian

Last Day of the Retrograde!!!

One more day! And we’re out. This one has been a particularly bad one. Major servers and websites went down, computers were wiped out by viruses (mine included) and it seemed like half the places I went, their credit card machines were malfunctioning. Not to mention the arguments over miscommunications and all of the Olympic screw-ups (holding the Olympics during nearly the exact length of the retrograde was as bad as holding the 2000 election on a retrograde. Look at the crazy thing that happened then. HE’S NOT EVEN THE ONE WE ELECTED!!) The retrograde usually hits Geminis and Virgos the hardest–here at Club Manic, we have 3 Geminis sharing one abode (Brian, Peyote and I) . Peyote has been spastic lately. But I had a deep heart to heart with him last night and he seems to feel better. But I can never tell. He just stares at me with those beady little eyes.

Funny…my computer just crashed as I was writing this.

I quit.

Warning for Those Who Work/Live in Santa Monica

B just told me that a coworker found out that someone took $1000 out of her checking account ($500 at two 7-11’s). She went to the bank to work it out, and there were a lot of other people there who had the exact same thing happen. An officer from SMPD was there and he said that someone was making fake ATM cards and had the pins.

Apparently, the common denominator was that everyone who got ripped off got gas at the Arco Station at Olympic and Cloverfield in Santa Monica and used an ATM to pay.

So if you’ve been to that gas station and paid with your ATM, check your bank statement.

For a Good Time, Sue Your Friends

I spent most of today in a five-hour mediation session that went nowhere. The goal was to come to some sort of settlement, but now it looks like this lawsuit is going to trial in March, which really, really sucks.

For those of you who don’t know, all the units in my building are suing the builders because when the units were sold, they were represented as 2700 sq. ft. But we found out two years later, that they’re actually 2250, which is a difference of as much as an entire bedroom. I was very close to the builder and his family from the time when we met and his wife was dying of cancer (the whole story is somewhere on this blog, but I’m too tired to find the post), so you can imagine this whole ordeal has been really upsetting. I had even called him when the other units were preparing to sue and I said I wouldn’t join because of my relationship with the family. I ended up calling him and asking him straight up if our units were only 2250, and he said no, that it was a mistake with the county, so to find out all this was really disappointing. But given all of the evidence to the contrary, and the fact that when it comes time for me to sell this place, I will have to represent it as a 2250-sized unit, I went ahead with the suit. I hate being played for a fool and this all comes down to principle.

This was the first time we all sat down face-to-face with our lawyers present. First of all, I like semantical arguments so I liked listening to the cases, presentations and rebuttals. It’s an intellectual sport, really. I’m good at analogies and my lawyer kept making bad ones, so I would jump in and help out (ie. The square foot issue is like paying for a minivan that seats 8, and getting a sports car that seats 2. It doesn’t matter that the sports car is a great car, too. It’s about a consumer’s right to receive exactly what it was that they were told they were paying for. Either you add on the other 6 seats, which obviously, isn’t possible, or you have to find some way to compensate for the difference).

At one point, when the builder looked me in the eye and said, “I didn’t lie to you. I would never lie to you. [My son] would never lie to you,” I didn’t feel good. I have hoped all along that maybe, somehow, this has all been an honest mistake, but from a business standpoint, this is about a balance of value, business ethics, consumer rights and getting what one pays for. If they just do what’s fair and balance this whole thing out, I walk away and easily put this nasty business behind us.

I obviously can’t talk much about this situation since we’re going to trial and their lawyers can easily find this website. But this whole thing sucks. Never, ever do business with friends.

The funny thing was that during the break, I looked at my cell phone and saw that I had 12 missed calls. They were all from Michael. I guess he was worried that I hadn’t been on Instant Messenger all day, so he WALKED to my office, saw that I wasn’t there, and then was walking around LA looking for me. Luckily, I was about 3 blocks away from my office. I told him I couldn’t come down and see him, but asked if it would make him feel better if I directed him to where I was so he could wave at me. So I was on the phone with him, directing him to a spot across the street where I could see him (from the 21st floor) and he waved up to the building. It was really cute. After I got off the phone, my lawyer said, “I didn’t know you had a child.”

I thought that was funny. But it’s true. I’ve always felt like a second mother to Michael.

for a beautiful person

and i felt the echo in the specks of your eyes
the last traces of her still chilling in your own private spaces

into an annotated tableau

you
thinner than you would like to remember
chipped around the edges
but still
mama’s favorite warrior
sayin’ to no one in particular
(but everyone in particular)

‘you got me so sick with your sadness
i tell ya
it must’ve been raining the day you were born’

(but not really meaning it this time)

the warm air curling around your words
each soft curve upon hard angle
(like a woman’s defiant body when she’s angry)
swallowed by a dark hypnotic empty
until i couldn’t remember if they existed at all

and a distant train whistle
notes trailing behind a timid fingernail
drawn through a widening leadened wake
signaled another cross-country freight
rumbling
deeper into the night.

A Long Overdue Basketball Post

Okay, so I haven’t said anything about USA Basketball because I’ve been busy in my Happy Place, rocking myself in the corner of my closet and banging my head against the wall. It all comes down to this–we’re Americans and in America, we live and die by the dollar sign. Yes, we could have probably put together a more functional team. Maybe even pulled some unknowns who haven’t/can’t make it in the NBA but have excelled in European basketball. But how many jerseys would have have sold with NBA scrub names? How many people would have tuned into the games if we had sent the likes of Brian Cardinal, Michael Redd and Scoonie Penn? Winning the gold and upholding a tradition is not as important as showboating but then again, aren’t we a country built upon showboating? Anyway, I don’t really care enough to rant about it. In the end, there is only one person who should shoulder the blame: George W. Bush. Because he’s an idiot and the whole world is rooting for us to fail in every aspect now. In better news, I love team Argentina. Manu. I love that guy. He’s adorable.

Queer Eye for the Straight Girl

Brian is rabid about getting me on this show. His evidence:

Fucking Americans.

The Idiots at Princeton Review

My cousin brought some vocab flash cards to my grandma’s bday party yesterday, so I was flipping through them. I got to the word “Condecending.” I asked her, Did you type these out yourself? She said, No. They’re from Princeton Review.

Maybe they should learn how to spell before they try to teach kids how to master the SAT.

Anyone Want to Send Me Your Handwriting?

I collect signed old yearbooks from around the country because they contain fascinating collections of different types of handwriting. But I think I’m going to put out a call for handwriting samples for artistic purposes. I don’t know what I’ll do with them. But I would like to see a wide range of handwriting meshed together as an analogy to life, showing the wide range of people and personalities and expressions co-existing on a single plane.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone!!!

Peace. Respect. And don’t set the hamsters on fire.

Personality Typology

Much is usually made of the Myers-Briggs method of personality typology
(to find out your personality type, take the test at http://similarminds.com/myers-briggs-jung.html)

I’m an INFP , in case you’re wondering. Which makes me…a total pussy.

But in my life role as an observer, I’ve noticed other correlations between certain things and personality types, so I’d like to present the 3AM Wanderer’s Worthless Method of Personality Typology Test.

1. Cats or Dogs?
2. Starbucks or Coffee Bean?
3. Mac or PC?
4. Forest or Ocean?
5. Sun or Rain?
6. Morning or Night?
7. Summer Winter Spring or Fall?
8. Waking or Sleep?

If you’re a CSPCneitherSMwhateverW…you’re an anal-retentive prick and most people hate you.
If you’re a DCBMbothRNwhateverS…you’re a pro-marijuana hippie living with a nudist tree colony.

Everything in between…I don’t know. Make up your own shit.

I’m DCBPCFRNFS. Though I like cats and dogs and forests and oceans equally.

8/26 Recap

I had an hour and a half to kill after work before my acupuncture appointment so I let my bro watch the South Park movie while I read. About 20 minutes in, I had to turn it off when Brian came home and my brother goodnaturedly said to him, “Suck. My. Dick.”

I am wasting my life at this job. I don’t mind what I do when I have stuff to do, but the problem is that I’m either going at 110 mph or .002. Without projects, I can finish a week’s worth of bullcrap admin work in a matter of hours. And then I just sit there. There doesn’t even seem to be enough internet to surf anymore. I’d rather work part-time so at least I don’t feel like I waste so much of my precious life trying not to nod off, but they are insistent on having me there full-time. Just in case. And I’m the only one they’re strict with about coming in on time and leaving on time. Even though everyone else comes in late and leaves early. I like this company and I like the people but if I don’t get my ass going and get writing and get over this thing about my refusal to market myself, I’m going to go nuts under these damn fluorescent lights.

This post is from Sunday, 8/15/04; I finally finished transcribing from my notepad.

When the Universe Echoes in Your Head Does Venice Beach

Every once in a while, I allow myself some slack in my creative endeavors and get to do one of my favorite activities. I hit a crowded place on a Sunday and fill up a whole tiny notepad (like the ones detectives carry in movies) with observations, thoughts and the usual stream of conscious erraticism that spasms through my brain.

Today, I hit Venice Beach. I walked the entire stretch, scrawling in my notebook until it was filled. Here is a narrative of my afternoon, probably intolerably confusing, recorded and represented by the contents of my notepad.
***************************************

I like the warmth of black people. The assumed intimacy, for better or for worse.

there’s some guy in front of the Titanic store (they sell Cowboy hats and somewhat European looking men’s clothes). He’s doing a male tribal dance of sauve masculinity set to drum n’ bass music (aka the male stripper dance), flexing his pecs and holding “sexy” poses. I want to laugh but I’m afraid because he seems really serious about this. I’m curious how this guy can go home after hours of doing this and take himself seriously. He ends every dance by flashing a business card next to a matching large poster of an ad. I think I get it. This is the male interpretive tribal dance of advertising? Fuck, man. Is this what our civilization is coming to?

(why does everything end in, ‘wanna go home and fuck,’ with you?)

He saw her watching. Taking everything in.

-Where’re you from?
-Minnesota, she said.
-Oh. I have a friend in Minnesota.
-I’m not actually from Minnesota.

It’s a different community out her in Venice. There’s a lot of soul. I like it. Here, you can be invisible. No strict rules of behavior. Total immunity to be yourself. For me, it is to observe. To absorb. To appreciate.

(Craig’s List is an internet hippy community)

This blinged out black kid wearing nearly all powder blue head to foot walks by with this tall, beautiful girl in tiny daisy dukes. Three black guys pass by, going in the other direction. As they pass, neither party makes eye contact–despite being highly aware of each other, they refuse to admit the other’s presence. When the kid with the girl is a few yards behind, the three guys immediately talk with bravado and in detail about the nasty things they’d do to that girl, like this was their egos’ needed ritual to show disrespect towards the Alpha male and to reconfirm their masculinity.

I find indecipherable handwriting to be intriguing. It is like a code that only a select few can interpret.

I’m looking at Matthew Perry and a pretty dark-haired girl. His body, though lean, is long and gangly, like a boy’s body still stuck in that awkward high school phase. What stands out about him is the obvious care he takes with his skin, but his hair is mildly thinning.

It always freaks me out what kinds of things people carry in their purses. So I go out of my way not to look.

I’m watching a band. The guy with the maracas doesn’t even look human. With his long shaggy white hair and beard and floppy green hat framing a rubbery red face, he looks like a muppet.

Go out anywhere where there are people and you will see vibrant, beautiful, ALIVE people. How can this not make you absolutely fall in love with this world?

this dancing couple glows with happiness. I can’t stop watching.

People from the midwest have a more narrow focus to their psychic scope, a hardness to them. They are more aware of the need to be aware of physical survival due to the cold climate, and it’s prevalent in the way they carry themselves. People from the west coast don’t really have to worry about physical survival because everything is so easy. You can probably find examples of these disparate temperaments in animals living in warm and cold climates as well.

The toothless psychic. She freaks me out a little. I mean, she’s toothless. What is it about people who are toothless that makes a person so uneasy?

Psychics? I believe in the ability to see. But I don’t believe in the business of telling everybody. It kind of really pisses me off actually. They’re messing with a lot of people’s hopes and life paths when they claim to be able to see everything about everybody. It doesn’t work that way. Psychic ability is a focused connection. You can only see certain things for certain people, and you can only interpret as far as your own personal perspective. Psychic communication is a private, intimate affair.
(For the Rules of Psychic Intuition, see 3rd Post from Jan. 26th, 2004)

a 6’5 fat guy wearing an Iverson jersey just doesn’t look right.

Watch couples walk. Sometimes the guy is pulling the pace to a quicker speed, walking in front of the girl, and sometimes they are shoulder to shoulder at both slow, ambling and quick, focused strides. Says a lot about the balance in the relationship. Some guys naturally do it. Just try not to allow him to walk in front. You know what? Open a door for one of those guys who insists on setting the pace a little too fast and walking ahead of a woman. It really fucks him up because he’s used to and depends on a role of dominance.

I bet if I sit here long enough, I’ll see someone I know. I ALWAYS run into people. It’s what God blesses me with — reconnections.

My parents really don’t want me around black guys. But you don’t understand. The first person I ever loved, ever felt connected to as a baby was black. And my consciousness at the time wasn’t developed enough for me to have retained anything more than a fuzzy, swimming notion of that person.

My mom never understood why I love flea markets so much. It’s not that I was looking for items to purchase and bring home. It was more that I wanted to look at other people’s things, to find clues to put together someone’s life story and to figure out how these people experienced life.

I am alive. I can feel the warm wind blowing against my cheek and my skin breathing in the goodness of it and I know it’s a blessing to be alive.

People shouldn’t keep pets just as accessories. It’s not nice.

That’s the 7-Up guy.

Some people just look crazy. I don’t mean the obvious ones. The average ones. That look like every other person. Except there’s something very unpredictable in their eyes.

Ah, this African American woman working as a psychic. You’re the only one of them here who actually looks spiritual.

The Robot Man. Big, black, ripped. He looks like he was delicately sculpted from a block of dark chocolate.

What happens to all the people you meet in life? I know my #1 question to God when I meet him will be…what ended up happening with every single person I ever met? I want to know where life took them. Every one of them. Even the ones I had only fleeting interaction with.

I get a kick out of seeing really tall and lean people. It reminds me of the awe I felt towards trees when I was little.

I think I know why I’m fascinated with Ben Wallace’s body. I feel like if I were a giant who could grab him by the waist and wave him around, he’d be like one of those crazy-sculpted He-Man action figures.

Black guys have the nicest butts, hands down. And I’m not even a butt girl.

This couple is having sex on the beach. Why do I always catch people having sex?

Fucking for love
Or fucking for money
Or fucking for fuck’s sake
It’s all s
till fucking.

Excuse me. Why do you look so sad?

I was dying to ask him. I watched him walk by and I realized I could either run after him, or never see him again, and thus, never find out why this man looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

There are the boys who figure things out faster–that a guy should go out with the fat girls because it’s the fat girls who can be pressured into putting out. And then they end up being fathers at 15.

I’m searching for the stranger with the eyes that I will recognize.

I told myself there is fun left to be had; the sun had not yet set .

When the sun sets and the throngs leave, and it’s just you nestled between the sky and the sand with the ocean lulling you to sleep, it’s like paradise here.

I Finally Died in My Sleep

In my dream last night, I was at a trade show with my dad in a big hotel. I worked for a government agency and I got word that there was a bomb in the building. It was in the daycare room and there were mothers and children all around. We didn’t want to alarm them so we didn’t evacuate the room. I find the bomb, which is this thing that is the shape, size and color of an egg with the shell made of a styrofoam-like substance. As I was opening it, glimpsing a black plastic-like interior, I remember thinking, I have to be careful because if I’m not, all these people will die. Then I felt my body jolt, like the wind was punched out of my body from the inside. I was still holding the egg thing and was really disoriented. There was a man in a dark suit standing to my right, and we made eye contact. He leaned towards me, his head close, and said, you opened the bomb and it blew up, killing yourself and everyone in this building. But we spliced your life and are giving you another chance, gesturing with his head towards the egg thing. Apparently, I had died and come back to life, but as far as my memory went, time was still continuous and I had no idea that in the space between what I felt was just a matter of seconds, I had been blown up and experienced death. When I woke up, I was still trying to wrap my mind around having died, having had such a HUGE EVENT happen without any conscious experience or memory of it.

Love, Friends and Parenthood

Have you ever noticed that, when a friend of yours is in a bad relationship, you can almost see her life fire burning so much dimmer? It’s like in science class when you put a jar over a flame to restrict the oxygen and the flame turns into this sad little blue nub.

I know they say that raising kids can be the most rewarding experience a person could have. But they tend to not mention, it’s also the most heartbreaking.

Thought of the Day…

Remember in high school, when Halloween came around, there were certain guys who ALWAYS dressed up like women? Usually the jocks. What’s up with that?

My favorite scene from Punch-Drunk Love…

“NOW GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE PERVERT!”
“DIDN’T I JUST FUCKING WARN YOU!?!”
“N–…that’s that.”

i LOVE philip seymour hoffman.

(On a related note, go see Happiness if you’ve never seen it. It’s one of my favorite movies. It’s deliciously WRONG.)

Click at your own risk…

This link is from my friend Tom’s site. He’s an internet guru I met at Sundance a few years ago and…well…fuck, man. You guys are messed up.

http://www.newgrounds.com/lit/horror.html

A great post from Margaret Cho about feeling alone in a crowd and about the benefits of listening to someone with a different perspective.

http://margaretcho.net/blog/iguessnot.htm

If I had my way, I would be able to talk to everyone I ever meet who intrigues me, and take my time with comfortable conversation to ask them about their lives, their experience of life and what they love, hate, fear, etc. Just so I can understand a wide range of individual, separate life paths and really feel where different people come from. I think that maybe it’s hard in Los Angeles, because people are so wary and suspicious–they expect that you want something, or that you will use what you learn about them against them, or worst of all, that you are trying to manipulate a false intimacy a la Fatal Attraction and will end up going nuts and cooking their pets.

I’ve never cooked anyone’s pets or taken advantage of people or disrespected the details in which people have been gracious enough to share with me. But I have to say that when you meet people and they open themselves up to you so that you can understand their lives, how they think and the places they’ve come from and survived, you really can’t help but love people. It’s a beautiful intimacy, to understand someone.

I honestly don’t see myself ever settling down into a relationship or marriage because I don’t really have a lot of sexual motivation or desire to funnel all my love into one sector. If I love someone, male or female, I consider them like family and will do anything for them, but it’s a blanket love–if I respect you and think you’re a good person, I’ll care about you; but I won’t want a whole lot back because I don’t want expectations of commitment that I can’t fulfill. I think my basic nature is that I want to love people and care about people and understand people, and obviously, I want people to reciprocate along the same lines, but I never feel comfortable with people getting close to me, and then getting upset because I go out and am in general, just in love with mankind.

Addendum: It’s the disappearing acts. I’m prone to disappearing for stretches of time and not returning phone calls/emails because I just need to be alone and to have things really quiet while I recharge. And I feel guilty about it a lot, but it doesn’t change the fact that I need it.

For August – No More Sex Life

One year ago, my roommate, Brian, moved in. He was quickly inducted into the experience of a Michael Summer Break Visit, which resulted in Michael’s infamous post-it on my fridge, “For August – No More Sex Life.”
( See 8/25 Posting.)

Michael is staying with me again. And Brian just came into my office to mention that one year later, Michael’s here again, it’s August, and still…no sex life for us.

Gosh. That’s really sad.