stress stinks

I had a nightmare last night about a class I'm teaching today--we were in a very large room and I couldn't talk loud enough for people to hear me, my guest speakers were late and people were sneaking out. Then I moved to a dream where I was going to take a shower but the bathroom was haunted and the ghost wouldn't let me turn on the lights. I went down to the downstairs bathroom and for some reason was going to try to take a shower in the refrigerator. Thank god I woke up then.

feeling tiny

It's amazing how putting together a book showing what you've been doing for the past two years can make you feel small. Tiny. Insignificant even. Getting very little sleep makes it even more stark how crappy you are and then you wonder how you've even survived this long.

But then, you remember that there's a new episode of America's Next Top Model on tv tonight and all is well.

a blatant advertisement

Saturday night, come one come all to TBH for a high kicking, pinwheeled fund raiser for La Chicana Laundry production's next project: Mexican Bingo.

Ah, but what does said fundraiser have to offer me, besides inflated entrance fees and a drive to the east side? Well, my friend, I'm glad you asked. You can expect food, drinkies, band(s), ladies being sawed in half, a showing of Un Plato Mas (starring me! okay, not starring but I have a small role in it), and probably a lot of other shenanigans. Also, you get to support local film making and feel good about yourself.

rum sodomy and the lash

aka, this weekend.

My friends had a pirate party this weekend and it was a tragi-comedy of minor proportions. I had to leave early because pina coladas and my stomach had declared war and the earring from my Pirate No. 5 from the chorus of Pirates of Penzance costume was squeezing the heck out of my ear AND the smell of banana rum should be banned from the face of the earth. However, I heard that after I left, the drunken gay neighbor became the weeping drunken gay neighbor. This is the same fellow who pounds on the ceiling at the slightest bit of noise and was only invited so he wouldn't rat my friends out to their landlord (again).

After I left, I went over to my friend's house and watched part of the Shane McGowan story (If I Should Fall From Grace). It got me to thinking about why brilliance has to come with disintegration via pills, booze and in Shane's case, a shocking lack of oral hygiene.

Saturday night and Sunday night I saw Gris Gris. The singer is the guy from the Mirrors, very brilliant and cute and didn't mind us buying cds from him in the middle of their set because we Had To Leave and then coming back about 3 minutes later to see the end of the show. His parents were there on Sunday (well, I guess the keyboard player is his brother, so the parents of half the band were there) and the mom was suggesting songs and generally helping out and being cute rocker mom. After that I went home and didn't go to the Cramps and slept for about a million hours and had a bad dream about some guy breaking into my house and kept waking up only to discover I was still asleep and finding weird things in my bed, like my dead cat and an old bic pen.

All in all, I was kinda glad to get to normal work this morning.

fridays shouldn't be sad

Usually bad things happen during the week, or if they happen on the weekend I don't find out about them until Monday, but today's different for some reason. My college and grad school roommate and friend wrote today to tell me that one of our dogs had died. She was really only my dog for a few years but I helped name her when we got her from a family when she was a naughty naughty puppy and I took her for many walks and freaked out when I thought she had parvo virus and watched her trick our other dog into going outside so she could chew on his bone in peace. Apparently she'd been sick for a while and I'm glad I didn't know about it since there was nothing I could do anyway. Goodbye, Kenya.

dreaming real fast

Last night I dreamed I was smoking and You Know What That Means. Also, I had a very petty jealousy dream about one of my friends. It was quite stupid: I asked a bunch of people to go to coffee with me and each one said no. Then she asked and everyone said yes. I guess I'm normal--I want people to like me.

groove

I've been listening to one of my fave Seattle bands lately. They're called Maktub and one of the band members hired me back in the Amazon days. They're doing a pretty good job of keeping my road rage at a manageable level but I am feeling the need for more groovy music for the drive. Most of my music falls into one of two categories: twang or bang (poppy music in various incarnations). I'm taking suggestions.

prattle

Warning: tv-related spoiler!

I was watching the premier of CSI Miami last night. They'd advertized that one of the cast members was going to die but that usually means some minor character that only appears in a few episodes anyway. As I was watching it, I even forgot about the impending death because it was shaping up just like any old episode, Horatio and Tim going into a jewelry store to check out whether the store had stolen some gems, ho hum, when all of a sudden Tim got shot. Pretty much outta the blue and there wasn't even that moment of "oh, he'll pull through. they'll perform some miracle at the hospital" because he was spitting out blood immediately and died right there in H's arms. Damn. He wasn't even my favorite character (Eric is hotter, Callie is cooler, and I love love Alex) but geez, why kill off Spiedle?

Okay, then this morning I flipped to UPN to see who was on Fantasy Island only to discover they've replaced it with two episodes of a Different World. Marisa Tomei is on the first year or so and she was cute, just like Brittany Murphy used to be on Sister Sister before she got all anorexic.

Finally, and unrelated to television, I got an estimated mortgage from my broker, and it is soooo expensive to buy a damned house in this town because of the property taxes. Tax assessors must all go to hell! Still, I want to do it because I'm tired of throwing money down the hole, i.e. paying rent, so if you see me in the next year or so and I'm looking a little ragamuffiny, buy me a cuppa coffee.

take some prozac first

This weekend I watched the United States of Leland. It would make a good double feature with Donnie Darko. It touches on many of the same themes: teenage boy, isolation, (un)preventable violent acts, mental illness, the dark night of the soul. It also has a bunch of good actors, including Jena Malone and Don Cheadle.

I thought it was a good film and I enjoyed it but at the same time I was completely depressed when it ended.

In other news, I talked to my old beau this weekend. Somehow, after not talking for almost 8 months, we're able to pick up our friendship (we were pals for several years before we started fooling around) where we left off. That was my weekend miracle.

evidence that men never grow up

Walking to work today, I passed an older man, probably in the 55-65 range, about to walk into a large lecture hall. He had silver hair and was wearing a dark suit and looked rather dapper from what I could see. Standing there outside the entrance, he paused to shine each shoe using the back of the opposite leg's trousers.

in memorium

I was in a really pissy mood this morning on the way to work and I couldn't figure out why. Then I saw on msn that Johnny Ramone had died. Damn it.

racially insensitive

What's the offspring of a male horse and female donkey called? A Hinney!

But what if the horse is the female and the male is the donkey? Gosh, it's gotta be a Honkey, right?

Believe it or not, that sad little joke stems from a library-wide discussion concerning a new Library of Congress Subject Heading:

150 Hinnies
550 Livestock
550 Donkeys
550 Horses
670 Work cat.: 2003070232: Grovet, Heather. Beanie, the horse that wasn't a horse, 2004. 670 Wikipedia, Feb. 12, 2004 ßb (Hinny: the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey) 670 Am. heritage dict. ßb (Hinny, n., pl-nies: The hybrid offspring of a male horse and a female donkey)

You can't ever say we don't have fun here at the library.

"full of grace, full of grace"

If you've ever seen the movie Pecker, you get the title of today's entry. Pecker's grandma has a statue of Mary that she makes talk and everyone plays along, like the spirit of Mary inhabits and animates the statue.

I was reminded of that sort of uncontrolled pronouncement today during an interview. One of my colleagues, famous for odd and out of control comments said to the candidate in reference to electronic books, "Tools of the Devil!"

I think I'll get one of those librarian action figures and make her talk. "Tools of the Devil, Tools of the Devil."

drinking and terror make for good weekend

Friends: Cheers for the Beers (and fears) this weekend!
I successfully completed the first step of my quest to become a born again alcoholic, or at the very least build up my tolerance so that drinking two beers doesn't make me woozy and bleary. I couldn't do it without your support.

As for the fears part, once I got into bed last night, I realized that most of the scariest parts of Ju-On occurred when people were in bed. The only way I could get disturbing images of creepy little boys and soul sucking Japanese style ghosts out of my head was to think about cake. You'd think that since most of the scary scary parts were the same, and by that I mean that the same sort of thing happened to the individuals who got, you know, caught up in the Ju-On, that I would have gotten less frightened as the movie went on. However, I got more and more scared instead. By the end I was crouched down in my seat and my pal had smeared her glasses several times with movie popcorn butter. The creepiest thing happened after the movie was over. We were the last people in the theatre and I pointed to one seat where there was an almost full drink sitting in the cup holder. The man had left about half an hour into the film and never come back. I became convinced that the evil spirits had gotten him in the bathroom. I guess we'll never know.

my goals

One of my pals just made a mission statement for her blog. Kudos, I say. I'm not quite that organized, but here are the goals I hope to achieve by hosting a blog.

1. Readers occasionally guffaw or at the very least nod their heads and say "yes, yes."
2. I get to tell people about movies and other weird things I see.
3. Confession. It's good for the soul, right?

My ulterior motive is, of course, to become more popular. Isn't that what everyone wants? Luckily I don't measure my success by the number of comments I get, since people hardly ever comment (hint hint). I will partially blame that on blogger...since posting is either anonymous or you have to log in and that's just annoying. So, if you have enjoyed any of my posts here at in the hoosegow, tell your friends and loved ones. Feel free to send me money and love. Or cake. I love cake.

why i hate my dentist

This will come as no surprise: I hate going to the dentist. As an adult, all of the dentists I've gone to have been women. My childhood dentist was a man and I loved him. His hands always smelled like soap (this was before the AIDS crisis, needless to say) and no matter how many cavities I'd managed to wrack up since the last visit, he was happy to fill them! Did I mention he had 6 children, all planning to attend college?

I found a really wonderful dentist in Seattle who was very no-nonsense. She helped me through my "my teeth are all going to fall out!" phase and then passed me on to another really terrific dentist who let patients watch movies while the hygientist worked. Needless to say, Dr. Doolittle can go a long way toward calming terrified patients like me, normally tensed so much that I have to stretch before I drive home.

My dentist here is a mercury-free dentist, the only reason I picked her. My first visit lasted about 3 hours, 45 minutes of that was spent sitting alone in a room, wondering if they had completely forgotten about me. I was planning not to go back, but I'd paid a lot to get a bunch of xrays taken and I really do want to get my cruddy mercury fillings replaced, so yesterday I went back. Almost immediately I wished I hadn't. I got into a fight with my dentist. She is so sweet, so caring, so motherly that I want to smother her with my chest spit protector thingy and run gleefully from the office. I bite back my anger and stick to my guns. She goes away and the hygientist begins to work. That is, she begins after she finds her chain thingy that holds on the spit thingy, and then again after she trades the wrong tools for the right ones.

The cleaning itself sped past. I guess that tartar toothpaste really does work! Then the dentist came back to figure out what the hell to start working on. I beg her to fix the tooth that has an old filling and (according to her) 3 cracks. It hurts! No, don't do 4 tests to figure out what makes it hurt (cold, hot, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, watching too much According to Jim), just fix the damned thing.

Slightly more than an hour after I got there, I am free, but I have to go back. Oh darn, I am busy for a while and can't make a long appointment anytime this century. Besides, she wants to work early in the morning and then after that I have to come back and either teach or work at the reference desk? Already I have visions of me, inadventently imitating Bill Cosby "take-bah the first-bah left-bah...", drooling and cursing. Of course, that'd come out something like "Ah hate-bah mah exshpletive denshist."

billy, don't be a Hero

I love many things Chinese: noodles and dumplings, the huge variety of faces, night markets, green vegetables that have no English names, and of course the Qin dynasty. Hero is a film about the dynasty that united China. It's a story worth telling and retelling because if its impact on Asia and, really, the entire world. What's amazing about the film, though, is its beauty. The costumes, the sets, the setting, all rich with color and texture. I'd love to describe my favorite scene, but my words wouldn't do it justice. I'll merely leave you with a strong recommendation to see it on the big screen.

Noteworthy: getting to see what an ancient Chinese library looked like; the fact that in very windy conditions, no one's hair is ever in his or her face.

taft is my favorite president

Further evidence that the universe is against me:
Over the course of the past few days I have eaten 11 donuts. Sure, they were tasty and yummy, but they've given me a stomach ache and I feel really really fat. I got up this morning to partially remedy the situation by running around and while I was in the bathroom it started pouring. Kind of torrential pouring, not the kind where you just put on a hat and say "fuck it". By the time it had stopped, it was time for me to get ready for work.

stop laughing, start clapping, an almost rhyme

I was teaching a class yesterday for about 40 college seniors. The class is set up so that I couldn't walk around amongst them at all--I had to stand in front of them in good old lecture format. So I had lots of time to look at people's faces while I was talking and, as usual, there were a couple of guys who were smiling and sort of laughing. I don't get that sort of reaction from girls, who would surely be the ones smirking if my fly were hanging open, my hair were even crazier than usual or my sweat stains were reaching gargantuan proportions.

I was left wondering, "What the hell is so funny?"

If you happened to see me yesterday and you have the answer to this question, please post it in the comments because I'm super curious.