Author Archives: iasshole

Recap and Loose Ends

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I have been writing so much online lately I feel obligated to catch you up on things. A lot of times when I am depressed or otherwise unmotivated I just puke into the wordbox and run away, which leads to people going “what happened with so-and-so” to which I say “paisley banana” because I am irritating like that. So, an update.

1. Okay, so the lice are beaten into submission for now. I am not so foolish as to say that they are gonesville, because we know where that kind of hubris gets us. That’s right, pregnant with triplets, a pegleg, and with a car we can’t afford to take out of hock. You know, despite the fact that lice can go and be everywhere, I thought I was living some kind of charmed lice-less existence, kind of like how I have never (yet) had strep throat.

This morning I was talking to a friend about it as well, and she was recounting her family’s experience with parasites and how loaded that all is. There are so many implications there about class and money or lack of, and everything. I will say that when I was in school there was one girl who we knew was the lice vector repeatedly and she was always kind of a hot mess and was nicknamed “Booger” because guess what she used to do in the front row of music class? I’ll never forget when Mrs. Giardini stopped playing her autoharp to snap, “JESSICA! Stop that.” I guess I made some kind of connection between lice and personal habits and possible moral turpitude, I don’t know.

I am also feeling extra empaddled by the universe since we just did a month of flea battling. Wug.

2. Job hunting rambles on. Today I stormed off a website that is taking applications for a job because I found it to be one of the most horrendous pieces of application software I have ever seen.

a. The multistep form. FUCK RIGHT OFF with that. You know the form’s going to crash on you when you’re on step seven of nine and it will eat everything.

b. Salary expectations. Hmm, let’s see here. The job description did not include a job title and was rather vague about allocation of duties and time spent. Honestly, the job requirements were even a little vague. I can work well in those vague areas because I am fast on my feet and a quick learner, but you want me to assign a value to a job that sounds, at this point, rather vague? I’d really like to get to know you better and hear what you can offer me before I under or overbid myself, thanks. And what’s that, you won’t accept the values “negotiable,” “$00.00,” or “$1.00”? Screw that.

c. I’m a job applicant, not a study participant. Please don’t make me fill out multiple steps about where I heard about your job or other stupid information like that.

Your application page is my first indication of you as a company, as opposed to your products. You sound like boobs. I had to X the fuck out of there.

3. Further, I have now been to two trainings for retail job, totaling nine-and-a-half hours of training. Next Sunday I have ANOTHER two-hour training. After the most recent training, they drop the little bomblet on us that because of the way the economy is, we may not get called to work for three weeks in a row, if at all. When I applied I was told that I would probably be working between 20-40 hours a week. They made us come to the training in uniform, which I had to buy, because I did not own pants in their company colors. Some of us may be kept on after the holiday, but don’t get your hopes up. I filled out the availability form with a heavy heart.

The feedback I am getting repeatedly, when I get it, is that whoever interviewed me “liked me a lot” but that they had someone else with x experience. I get it. I have a phone interview for a job I am really interested in on Friday, and am waiting to hear back about a second irl interview I did late last week. I’m tired.

4. Also, lucky me, I wrote the inaugural post over on Uppity Women today. I am going to be posting there Tuesdays at a minimum, with whatever current event strikes my fancy. Some posts will be more feminist than others, I reckon. I am probably going to keep it light over there until I find my voice and figure out what I’m doing. It’s been fun making the shift between here and Blogher, which is a different sort of blog with a different audience, so I look forward to exploring another facet of how I want to write there.

5. I made an Obama cake and I want to show you it, but I cannot transfer pictures onto Abacustop. I am still working on prying my harddrive out of Hester Prynne. Life feels so slow this week and I am all getting my tired on because I am ramping up my running again now that my legs feel better. I ran two miles today and did a mountain of lousy laundry. Booyacah!

Sigh

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A question and a story. If I tell you a story, will you answer my question?

I was at the doctor’s the other day, sitting there talking to her when I realized something was jutting into my breastbone. I reached down and found a wire. An underwire, in fact, creeping out of my bra.

“Oh, dear,” I said, interrupting the flow of everything. “I seem to…hmm. My underwire seems to be sticking out of my bra.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Uh…” I dithered, unsure of what to do. “I think this will be okay.” I sort of shoved it back in. “Hang on,” I said.

Fuck it. I fished into my shirt and pulled it out.

“Okay, I’m just going to put this in my purse…and done.”

That was awkward. As it turns out, this is my only beige bra, which is critical for wearing under light clothing because it “matches” your skintone. All my other broosieres are like black or pink zebra or some shit. Since I am putting off buying things like bras for now, I was like fuck it, Ima keep wearing this.

So I had the slightly sad boob and the higher, differently-shaped boob. I don’t care if I’m cockeyed! I do what I want! Then I was stretching a little and heard a snapping sound-the other underwire broke on the inside. Yes, I’m still wearing it. I DOOO WHAT I WAAANT.

A question: is it possible to comb nits out of your own hair? Has anyone ever done it? Thanks. It’s days like these that I really deplore my poor life choices.

Theory: Too Much Guacamole

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How can it be that I laid in bed for two hours? I am indolent, under a spell. I am in one of those special moods, some kind of melancholy brought on by a dream that you can’t shake. It’s usually gone by dinner, though, right? Talking to people, having meals, seeing ordinary things that lock into our perception of what the world really is. You have no thought that your dog is going to turn into your favorite kind of waffle, whereas you would be entirely, deliciously accepting of that is it happened in a dream. You would take a bite of your dog’s waffle-divoted rump and ask for more.

I have always had that feeling, fairly or not, melodramatically or not, that I’ve been on the outside. I think this is true of everyone to a certain extent. But maybe especially true when you experience that family reshuffle, which makes you feel like you’re the extra one there, unwanted, but tolerated. It is also true when you experience the geographic reshuffle and are surrounded by strange accents and food and a social structure that has been in place since preschool that you don’t even have an inkling of. You stay in one place for a while, get grounded, become a known element, your moves, voice, reactions are predictable, and then you experience the worst reshuffle of all: the internal one. Your brain cracks open and turns on you. You are gay, gay, gay, and almost worse than that in this place, godless. You think maybe those people who told you there was something wrong with you were right, because here it is come to pass. You get stuck and smeared on the factory sorting bar because you cannot find a boy to cling through to pass through with on your way to the next zone on the factory floor, the church group.

So I have dreams where I find myself in rooms full of people who are nothing like me, or out of my past, or completely hostile to me, or all of those things. I think this is mundane and normal; an anxiety dream. I don’t know the house but the room is full of people posed, in the kitchen, leaning against the bookshelves, perched on the sofa arms, waiting for and dreading my arrival. Franny’s grandmother has died and they have all gathered in her absence.

The Italians who taught me to shout, impassioned, to fling my arms, to slap one hand on the table for emphasis and then listen in the silence as the crystal in the cabinet tinkles, to tip chairs. There they were, sitting quietly, calmly, not yet needing to mobilize their force against an enemy. They chatter politely and comfortably with a group of people from my future: Franny’s family.

They are mixed in with the Italians, blonde and lithe, looking like they just stepped off of a sailboat or are well-rested from a vacation. They are like giraffes, like cranes, mixed in with the Italians who are leaden and doughy, and loud even while speaking in their hushed reverent tones. The stage whisper was probably invented by Italians.

They turn as I enter, the older members welcoming and willing to absolve me of our past, unwilling to hold onto petty grudges. The younger members of either party glower at me, glance towards me and their eyes dart away. I am unwelcome here. I don’t really belong anywhere.

I confront them, I speak to both of them as a group, as if they both are completely familiar with my histories with each of them, separated by ten years or so. I am scared but I can’t hover in this house on the fringes.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and then I realize that there is strength behind my words and my voice. “I didn’t take anything from you.” I turned to the Italians. “I didn’t burn the house down and I was never going to.” Being turned on, being falsely accused of that intention stung like it was new. I turned to the WASPs. “I could have taken half the house, but I did not. Franny is still here. You still have her.”

The scene broke like it was a stage direction then: mill about and murmur. I was still not welcome, but I had said what was on my mind. I gave up and made to leave and my grandmother pushed something into my hands, a jar half filled with her sauce. The other older side of the family said something nice and thanked me for coming. I walked off up the street alone.

While Making Lunch

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Inky was keeping Strudel company on the couch. She obviously wasn’t feeling well from her flu shot yesterday. I half-listened as she jabbered on.

“Inky and I are alike,” she said.

“Oh really?” I replied. I can do three-year-old jabber in my sleep. Throw in some “you don’t says” and some “I did not know thats” and you’re good to go.

“We are the same because Inky is a mammal and I am a mammal.”

Wait, wut?

“How do you know Inky is a mammal?” I said.

“Because she is, Mom!”

“Who told you about mammals?”

“Inky did,” she said.

Of course.

In Other News

Because I like me some November hibernation, I like to stay home on Fridays and watch new television that I have acquired through non-pernicious means. My big stockpile of How I Met Your Mother, Life on Mars, Dexter, and Top Chef have all gotten eated for the time being by Hester Prynne. Looks like tonight I am going to be watching Doogie Howser, MD.

Thanks to Pootie Tang and Dr. Horrible I have been on a huge NPH jag. I realized this afternoon why I never watched Doogie Howser when I was a kid: NPH is blonde, and blondes are invisible to me. This also explains why my childhood BFF adored ‘ol Doogie and what’s-his-bucket from Silver Spoons. She loved blondes. But I am enjoying the hell out of it in that classique 90210 way. So wrong, and yet so right.

Blue Screen of Def

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Hester Prynne is stroking out on me and according to my internet learnings, I am going to have to reinstall Vista, or, alternately, upgrade to XP, but I feel like my XP disk wasn’t working last time I tried that for some reason. So for now I type on the world’s fanciest abacus, Bob, the six-year-old laptop. Of course I have to write my Blogher article on this thing today. Seriously folks, I was looking for an old file and I stumbled across one that told me how many head of cattle the pharaoh had.

WHOA there’s no call for that, is there? No, there is not. Anyway, I turn HP on and there is just this loop that sounds like the AVG bug, but I know I didn’t take any action with AVG lately, so I dunno. It also says it’s XP only, but I am disinclined to believe a lot of what I hear because people are basically always just guessing until they get new info. Vista does a lot of things to itself, so…Hester Prynne, did you self-destruct?

Anyway, I hope I’m not the only one who feels like they can’t breathe when they lose access to their bookmarks and ReminderFox and all that shit. Wish me luck.

P.S. It is important for you to know I dreamt that I went to a party with my gay high school boyfriend and we had sex in the coatroom (YEAH, like that ever even came CLOSE to happening IRL). I think this is because I just picked up Which Brings Me to You, by Steve Almond and Julia Baggott, which starts similarly. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a book that actually had a good sex scene in it. Plus, I just finished Fangland which is a modern update on Dracula and it had the WORST sex scene ever (you may be surprised to learn that the damned don’t bother with oral hygeine).

Sex in a coatroom is probably the best way to begin the epistolary novel, because sometimes they can be a bitch to get into. I didn’t know who Baggott was, but Almond gives me a literary boner for serious.

Fuck it, I’m going running. I’ll be the one wheezing pathetically and listening to NPR. I think I’ve lost a little weight, which is good because I am like in my third try on week five. And now I am fine when I dash up stairs and across streets to the bus. It’s nice to have some encouragement. Downside: let’s not talk about or look at my stomach. It’s funny what babies and ten pounds here and there can do to you. PING I’m Doug and I’m OUTTA HERE!

World of Goo

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I got World of Goo, which came out last month, and it’s totally under my skin. Did you ever play Lemmings back in the day? It’s kind of like that, where you have little objects that need to be directed or controlled, but there is an unpredictable physics component to it as well. Initially, WoG has the feel of one of those little casual flash games that you get obsessed with for a week and then forget it existed, but it’s more than that. The look is much more polished (the art is cute but not cutesy), the original music is very pretty and sets the mood well, and it has good replay value. There is an underlying story, as well, that unfolds like a mystery which urges the player onward.

The objects that you work with and control are “goo balls,” round living creatures with cute blinking eyes. Each type of goo ball has a different property or “talent.” (remember the digger Lemmings that would go and go until you were totally screwed?). The Player is introduced to different types of balls in the four chapters of the game, which is broken into the Summer, Autumn, Winter, and The Information Superhighway. The Epilogue, unlocked after you make your way through the four chapters, is “Spring.” The balls can stretch out and form arms that can be used to build towers and span gaps. If you build them too high or unsteadily, they can topple over or pop on spikes or you can listen to their sad cries as they fall into pits. The goal is to get a predetermined number of balls of goo into a goal pipe at the end of the level, which sucks them in.

There are two things that make this game compelling to me. The first is the writing and the plot. There is an unseen sign painter whose hints appear on signs in almost every level, as well as narration throughout the game. The plot hinges around the World of Goo corporation that harvests gooballs and turns them into food or beauty product–sort of a mass-consumer Soylent Green flair. There is a very tongue-in-cheek attitude towards corporate life and Big Brother, and advertisements for the World of Goo corporation abound through the game. I am convinced that the writer has spent some time at Microsoft. However, I think kids can probably ignore this subtext if they’re not hip to it and just enjoy the puzzle/building aspect to the game.

The second thing I find compelling is the variety of the puzzles. On some levels, the player can plan perfectly and easily set up the level for success, much like toppling dominoes. On others, it is just a matter of luck and quick building and thinking that will allow the player to barely squeak by. I had to give a few levels several tries before I figured out what I was supposed to do or the right way to solve it. This is not to say that the learning curve is too steep or the player is set adrift, like in Myst. There are “learning” levels where the player can get a feel for a new task or material before having to go into panic mode.

There is another component to the game that I have explored less, which is play in the World of Goo corporation screen, where players can build towers with the goo balls they’ve collected throughout the course of play. Players can connect online and see other player’s towers, and compete to build the highest one. This isn’t my bag, but others may like it.

World of Goo is addictive, well-written, crazy entertaining, and at $20 for PC is a great price point for holiday gifts this year. And HEY, it’s DRM-free. Be sure to check out the downloadable demo on the the 2D Boy site and check the screenshots.

(Also available for Wii and Mac.)

LOL I’m Poor

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In my inbox today:

Hey SJ,

My name is X and I am a Production Associate from The Tyra Banks Show. I
am currently looking for families who have been struggling financially
because of the country’s economic crisis. I see you have to cut back on a
lot of costs in order for you and your family to go from day to day.
Would you mind telling me a little about it in hopes of you and your family
appearing on our very special Christmas/Holiday episode?

Thanks,

X
———-

The Tyra Banks Show
Production Associate

Potential Employers, Metal Shit in Your Face, & You

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This afternoon I hopped around my bedroom, desperately trying to get my labret out for my interview today. It was crazy stuck. Was it cross-threaded? I looked in the mirror. It looked straight. Could I pull it through the back of the hole without cauliflowering my lip? Could I cover it with a bandage and say I cut myself…shaving? Makeup, making it look oh-so-convincingly like a really round and symmetrical wart? Not good. This place was WAI too conservative for face metal. Was I going righty-tighty by accident? Which way was it facing? If I was facing it like it was stuck to a wall then lefty would be one way, but it was in my face… WAS I TIGHTENING IT? I had a bus to catch!

THE PLIERS! Pliers are always the answer and sadly have gotten me out of many piercing-related pinches. Speaking of pinches…there was the needlenose and the biggier one, whatever it was called. Needlenose on the inside? I tried to get a grip on the flat disk back of my labret while spinning the front bead loose. Oh god oh god I was going to give myself a fat lip this way. I imagined myself canceling the interview and making up some bogus excuse. “My cat got kicked in the taco and now I have to take her to the cateria.” I drooled slightly as I tried to get a better grip on something, anything. I could not bang my face on the counter as if it was a stubborn jar.

I thought about how I had seen piercers do it. Rubber gloves! Of course. I put on one and got a firm grip and…felt it come loose. That was it. Now I only had a giant hole in my bottom lip. That looked totally natural!

I tried to take it out once, for good, but the absence bothered me. Someday I think my age and maTOORity level is going to be at odds with some of the weird stuff I have going on, like my labret, but I will cross that bridge later.

In other news, the interview went well, but now I have to do audition work for them this weekend. This seems to be a trend lately, like the head hunter who asked me to write a paragraph for each requirement of a job before being submitted for it. I am crossing my fingers that upfront work like this will be less of a trend. I am happy to provide writing samples. It’s been said repeatedly, but this process is so draining. The phone screens, the interviews, the waiting, the smiling, the thinking on your feet. Two long interviews and retail training, with more retail training to come. That’s enough for one week.

Also, I should tell you that Ruby took me out to see John Hodgman read last night. It was less like a reading and more like Garrison Keillor humped the Jerry Lewis Telethon. I had no clue wtc he was until he started talking about hobos. Then I was like, OH, this is the guy that KoL stole a bunch of stuff from. 10-4. The dude from The Long Winters showed up and was massively awesome, as was Sean Nelson, who covered Billy Joel SO well. And that guy that indie nerds are always hubbubbing about, Jonathan Coulton, was there too and sang Codemonkey. They should probably just tour.

Death and Technical Writing

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Yesterday was pretty weird. Imagine me saying that like Larry David: “Pretty preeetty weird.” It started off normally enough, considering that I had just scheduled yesterday’s job interview at 5 p.m. the night before. I was hustling to fill out an application, gather writing samples, and defuzzing my favorite interview shirt. I was mentally girding myself to speak with five people in a three-hour gantlet, finishing with the recruiter, which kind of made it six. It was exhausting, but I feel like I made a connection with all five of the people, including the person I would be a direct report to. They may feel differently. And HO SNAPPLE I have another interview tomorrow, which also involves writing. I am not ready to tell you about my retail training yet, but I will soon.

As I was walking out and daydreaming about a nice glass of wine as I dematerialized into a puddle on the floor, I noticed I had a message. Franny’s grandpa called, and I figured he wanted to snag her for the weekend. It was not what I expected: Franny’s grandmother died yesterday morning.

I have never written about her. She was my mother-in-law for eight years. When Franny was one or so, they announced that she had early-onset Alzheimer’s. She was still in her 50s. I did not know the woman who became confused, and then later frequently violent, as she was described to me. I knew only a woman who was quiet and gentle. They say at the end she was refusing food and water, and ripping out her IV. On some level she was done.

I returned the call and got Franny’s dad instead of who I expected. “Want me to bring Franny?” I said. “I’ll be nice.”

I brought a big bottle of scotch and the kid. We talked about politics and drank and talked about old times. We tried to remember where we got the clawfoot tub that lived in our backyard for so many years. It was pretty weird having the new wife there, though in reality I am the odd one out now. Probably in the end she will have more years with them than I did. SeaFed always seems subdued now, older, diminished in his power.

It was nice somehow, though. It felt like an old family gathering. Any annoyance I felt at SeaFed was always put on hold at those times, because I always enjoyed talking to his parents. Franny’s grandfather mentioned that Auntie Jaguar is coming up to see him and that we should all get together. I hugged him before I left and he said, “You can’t get away, you can’t choose your family.” That and his mention of having a big reunion made me realize that the past, when we were all together was some of the best times in a way. I always clicked with him in a really perfect way and I felt like I was his third child, not the feckless one or the bossy do-gooder, but the prickly, funny one.

SeaFed had a couple of moments where he actually said some nice things to me, about how I was with his mom. About how I was the first to cry when they announced she was sick and the first to get up and hug her, and how that meant a lot to her. Stupid starchy WASPs. Of course that’s what you do. You cry and cry until you’re all empty, and then you start over. I think his new wife fits in better than I did–she seems nice and calm. Franny’s other sister sidled over to Franny gently and stroked her hair and face, whereas Strudel jumps on Franny and says “DO YOU WANT TO PLAY FUCK YEAH CAPS LOCK!” Probably Auntie Jaguar likes having complete bossy-control over his family now. Franny tells me stories about being disciplined by Auntie Jaguar that makes her jaw clench as she tells them.

Sometimes I feel a lot of regret in leaving that family, but still not SeaFed. I think about if I would have stuck around so I could have reaped the benefits of all that time and love and history. It was being loved, even at times I was terribly uncooperative and contrary. But having SeaFed around…it’s like living with a donkey in your house so you can hear the bells on its harness tinkle sometimes.

Franny in mourning
stays away from school today
autumn leaves swirl down