Echo

Weekend Recap

There will be no weekend recap because I’m too tired to go through this weekend in overanalytical detail.

So I’ll just go through some random thoughts. I’ve been pretty random lately anyway.

First of all, I’m convinced that anyone can always get laid in Vegas. It’s a simple fact. But it’s such a vacuous experience that I don’t know what the point of it would be.

There are those who gamble for the social aspect of it, and those who gamble for the gambling/financial aspect of it. I am the former and am not compatible with the latter. In fact, I find serious tables to be a recipe for stress and losing a lot of money. I prefer tables where everyone is friendly and hoping that everyone else does well.

At whim, I bought some rolling papers on Saturday and rolled the pot that couple gave me into three huge joints. I bought a pack of cigarettes and threw out some cigs so I could fit the joints in the pack. Since pot-smoking was once a mainstay in the hippie tradition, I thought I would keep tradition alive by finding someone worthy to pass them on to. I forgot about them until Sunday, when my mom and I played blackjack between two guys from Wisconsin. They were really nice and fun. They invited me to hit up a club with them, and I wouldn’t have minded since they were really cool and non-threatening, but I wanted to call it in early that night. I thought I heard one of the guys asking the cocktail waitress for weed and I suddenly remembered my goodie box. So I asked the other guy, “Did he just ask her for weed?” The guy laughed and said, “I wish.” When my mom and I left the table, I told her to go on ahead and cash out our chips–that I was going to the bathroom. I doubled back and asked one of the guys if I could bum a cigarette. He reached for his pack and I said, no, let me borrow the whole pack. I had palmed the three joints in my hand, so I walked a few steps away, slid the joints in while closing the box in a single motion, then handed his pack back to him, telling him, “I changed my mind but left you guys a present.” I walked away, but turned around for a last look just in time to see him open the box, do a double take and close it quickly, his face lit up like Christmas. Now they have a story to take back to Wisconsin. And that makes my day.

Wherever I go in Vegas, I inevitably end up at Harrah’s, where the people are nice and fun (both the employees and the customers). And I love the Carnival Court, that outdoor pit, bar and stage with the crazy flare bartenders and the awesome cover bands. It’s like toned-down spring break there all the time, without as many stupid drunk hos and dumb frat boys. I spent most of Saturday there, going back twice. I was relieved to find one of the groups I loved to still be performing there. They played 70s funk/disco/rock, which was a nice mix. I watched them in the afternoon as my mom slept with her head on my shoulder. The band at night was an all white band that covered a range of things, from Justin Timberlake, Outkast and Tupac, to country/classic rock. I saw them and thought, I KNOW those guys are gonna be kind enough to play some Guns N’ Roses. And they freakin’ rocked it out with Sweet Child of Mine. I went with my mom again and we danced. She’s really shy, but she likes music and festive places. She really appreciates that I take her to places like this, which is sweet. It kills my game, yes, to have my mom in a bar or club with me, but honestly, I figure that when I’m older, I would love it if my kids would be willing to treat me like a friend and hang out with me. I’m not there yet, but I know it’s lonely getting old.

I think my dad was upset with me because I didn’t spend any time with him. And also because I got home at 5am and 8am on Friday and Saturday respectively, and he always thinks that when I get home really late while we’re staying at a casino, it’s because I’ve picked up a dealer and am off having sex with him, which is never true. I think I was severely irritated because he spent most of his time hanging out with my cousin and the boys on my cousin’s basketball team, which I think is so damn lame when those punks only look up to him because he buys them things, while meanwhile, he neglects his own son. There. I said it.

I think I’ve known this for a while, but just don’t want to face it yet — I want out of LA. People in LA are too neurotic. I don’t mean neurotic as in harmless quirkiness or eccentricity. I mean the dangerous kind of neuroses where people are internally damaged and play it out with their immediate environments and everyone in the vicinity. I want to go spend time in places where by sheer comparison, my quirkiness aside, I’m the craziest person in the room, and people basically have a solid, trustworthy core. Where you live should be a place where you want to live, not a place where you feel you have to cope with living in.

Neurotic people hide in cities. They are as much mentally overstimulated as they are existentially and/or emotionally conflicted so they search out an environment that is equally as chaotic or more so than their insides, so that the internal is balanced with the external and thus, their own private chaos and neediness is justified and supported. And while there isn’t a problem with neurosis itself, it can be expressed very detrimentally to the emotional welfare of others. I keep making a distinction between liking small town people versus city people (especially because I’m a small town girl myself), but I think what I really want is to surround myself with people who have inner integrity and emotional harmony. I’m sure detrimentally neurotic people can be found in small towns just as stable people can be found in big cities. But I want to be in an environment that promotes psychological wellbeing and truthfulness. I know that I’m eccentric and a free spirit, but I also know that I have a lot of inner harmony and integrity. Overall, I’m a stable, dependable person, and as much as people can deem me elusive, non-straightforward or mysterious, I doubt that anyone who has ever met me can question my sincerity and my goodwill towards fellow human beings.

I learn about life and the universe through observing people. My life purpose is about understanding people and the inner workings of life, and communicating what I observe, hopefully for the benefit of other people. But sometimes I feel that I let my romantic drive get in the way of my education of people, so that I get too close instead of remaining in the background and ensuring that I see things clearly and objectively. I have to learn to be more disciplined and not let my romantic, idealistic notions cloud what is really in front of me, creating an unTruthful idea of people and things. This has been a problem for as long as I remember. Don’t fucking touch the Muse, Shih…

I need to get a secondary business card to represent me as a writer. The card from my film company is quirkier and more targeted towards the film industry. I want another card that represents me as a more serious freelance writer putting together people-interest articles. Isn’t that such a gemini thing, having multiple business cards to represent different facets of my work? If I get another one for writing, that brings my total up to 4 different cards–one for my full-time job, one for directing/writing, one for business development and one for serious writing.

I’m taking a free online course about Forensic Science through Barnesandnoble.com . I just ordered the course book and for fun, some books on child psycho-pathology and neurological disorders. Sometimes it trips me out how heavily into spirituality I am, and yet, how heavily into science I am. I think they’re just two different languages of explaining similar things; when they contradict each other, they’re natural contradictions, not contradictions that exclude the validity of one another. But I find it beneficial to learn about science so I can have a lan
guage in which to explain more abstract concepts to people who insist that they only believe in science. Like how I think the dynamics between conscious perspectives, through a phenomenon similar to triangulation, create reality (which is inherently subjective), and the more people are gathered on a frequency, the reality becomes exponentially more subjective, thus explaining some psychological phenomenons (and pathologies) that occur in urban areas. And all this can easily be symbolized through mathematics. Pretty simple mathematics. Unfortunately, I don’t have a background in math or computer science, so I need someone’s help to help me create a program that will follow a formula to graph out what I’m talking about. I tried doing it by hand once (the dynamics between 120 people gathered in one interactive plane) but it was grueling and nearly impossible to be accurate. Anyway, I digress. I need to meet more people with backgrounds in math and science, yet are openminded and can fathom the abstract.

Sometimes, I think I am a robot.

I went to Rain in the Palms last night. Danced with my boyfriend. He’s a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous black man with the smoothest, creamiest skin. I’m not even gonna pretend I didn’t spend the whole time wishing he’d rip off his shirt.

Some funny videoclips to get you guys through the weekend:

http://www.ifilm.com/viralvideo?ifilmid=2648319 (Judo Idiot)

http://www.ifilm.com/viralvideo?ifilmid=960775 (Some pissed off guy in a cubicle)

http://www.milkandcookies.com/stuff/triumphvsw.asx(Triumph the Insult Dog Does Star Wars Fans)

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2421060 (Project Redlight, the spoof off of Project Greenlight, featuring Corey Feldman. The suffering wife was the main actress in my short).

Enjoy!

Hey Melo…the name of the game is SHUT THE FUCK UP.

http://msn.foxsports.com/story/2919428

Debbie Downer

This is the infamous SNL skit where the cast lost it. Rachel Dratch plays Debbie Downer, who says the most depressing things at the most inappropriate times.

http://www.liquidgeneration.com/blog/video/snl_downer.mov

(link may take some time to open. The link automatically begins the download. Patience, young grasshoppers!!)

9/3 Midcap

I’m off to Vegas in a few hours. It’s my first time there in over a year and two years since I dropped my Vegas project. I’m there with my family so that means I’ll either spend all of my time in the arcade with Michael, at the table with my dad as he glares at me because I flirt with everyone, or at the table with my mom, cockblocking her by telling the young guys who hit on her that she’s a lesbian. I kind of want to break the routine though. When I was working on the Vegas project, I was there a lot getting the feel for the casino floor and buddying up with dealers (sometimes a little too much so). I want to not gamble, and not be so aware of that shrill siren of desperation and mania in people’s energy that’s ubiquitous out there…just see the place from the eyes of a tourist who really thinks this is Disneyland for adults. By the way, I hate that term…Disneyland for adults. That’s what my coworker calls orgy-catering swingers clubs.

My coworker’s wife just had a baby this morning! A Virgo named Guy. We gave him a hard time about him choosing the name Guy. Like, why don’t you just give him the middle name Big Dick if you want to overstate his masculinity. I don’t think you should test God that way; he’s got a wicked sense of humor. I think choosing the name Guy for your first born son nearly insures that he’s gonna be born with a vagina. But I guess for this kid, all the parts were where they should be. Darn.

If It Isn’t Bad Enough When Someone Keeps Sticking Things In You…

I went to my acupuncturist last night sans Michael since he had a “playdate” with Jake… (they went to Subway). Even though Michael usually just sits there and giggles gleefully at me lying on the table in my underwear and getting stuck with pins, it’s comforting to know that he’s in the room.

The doctor and I were smalltalking in Chinese, which was somewhat difficult because she has a strong mainland accent and I have a 6th grade vocabulary. She asked me if I had a boyfriend, why not, etc. I said I date when I’m bored, but for real connections, I’m looking for someone in particular and I don’t know who, but I figure I’ll know when I find that person. But it has to be someone brilliant, gentle, open-minded and kind, and who can keep up with me.

She asked if I like Chinese guys and guys in their 30s, and started telling me about this one guy she knows. She was rattling off in Chinese and I got really lost from my lack of decent vocabulary. But I didn’t want to be rude because she was speaking so enthusiastically, so I just kept saying, “Uh huh…Uh huh…oh really…” But then she asked me, “What do you think?” I had no idea what she had been telling me or what she was asking me, so I said, “Wow.” And then the conversation ended.

I hope that I didn’t just give her the redlight to set me up or something. The last time I had an older Chinese woman talk to me about a guy while I smiled and nodded due to lack of comprehension, it was my cousin’s grandmother, and it turned out that she was pitching reasons why I should date my cousin. (We’re cousins by marriage. But STILL.)

And now, your moment of zen …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.