tintinnabulicious

Once I realized that the worst possible time to teach myself how to give myself manicures was after I was buzzy and wobbly from eating early afternoon Vicodin, I decided that it had been too long since I’d written anything. I’m only abusing the Vicodin a little bit- I pulled something in my back earlier today (weirdly, while doing squats, a situation that confused even my trainer), so the first one I ate was to make it so I could look at things happening to the left of me without bitching. The second was for good measure, however, as I believe that if you’re going to eat an opioid, you may as well enjoy it.

That said, hi! It’s been a minute.

And I’m turning 30 in four days, in the middle of one of the most exciting & scary moments of my life, where the line between being successful and fucking up horribly seems pretty thin. So that’s fun. I think I’m looking forward to it. There was a nasty patch going for a minute where I was a bit morbidly obsessed with mortality, almost debilitatingly so, but I’m more or less past that since my doc gave me some gentle sedatives which I don’t actually take: having them in the house acts as a totem, giving me a modicum of power over fear. Which is nice.

I wish I’d been writing about the success/failure thing over the last few months, as the success/failure thing was very definitely an arc, and I think that later on down the line I’ll regret not documenting things more thoroughly. But Cliff’s Notes: I started a business, and business is doing well. Which is to say: I’m solidly self-employed, and I don’t think I have to worry about job interviews any time soon.

Owning and running my own business has always been a dream of mine, as I have a long (and well-documented: I still have my elementary school report cards) history of having issues with authority. This has been a massive pain in the ass throughout a substantial part of my life, as even bosses who were supercool, patient, and fair quickly morphed, in my mind at least, into shitty little autocrats. That coupled with my knee-jerk “don’t tell me what to do” reflexes and my mind-boggling vanity tended to result in rather messy partings of ways with a number of former employers. Furthermore, I would think about the people I was working under, so many of them seeming paranoid, small, and stupid, and I’d be positive that given a kick-start, I could do as well or better.

In retrospect, I understand their fear, although there’s no forgiveness for being small and stupid. My overall impression of running my own business- even for these few months- has been one of barely controlled gambling. I’ve even lost a few hands, but fortunately I’m still up. I’m spending a lot of time reading dry how-to guides and forums and books, but I’m not very good at behaving in a patient or restrained manner, so I don’t really get to use what I’m reading.

About my fear of failure: (quick caveat: I’m never sure, and am always surprised, at the number of my emotional triggers which are nearly universally shared. Like when I accidentally discovered Buddhism.) This is my Big One, worse than mortality or god. As a child, when I would do a shitty job of, say, sweeping the back porch, my mother would always tell me that I’d end up “selling flowers by the side of the road,” if I didn’t better my work ethic, a fate that is essentially that of being a lonely illegal immigrant with a drug problem, no home, and a short, nasty life ahead of you. So in my mind, I equate failure with instant homelessness. I recently talked with a friend about this equation, about how I know, academically, that I would actually have to go out of my way to fuck up badly enough that I would become one of the shambling street mutterers, but that doesn’t stop the fear from being a very real thing. He didn’t know what to tell me other than 1) don’t get addicted to hard drugs, and 2) don’t go crazy. Sound advice.

Actually, the buzziness of the Vocodin has worn off, leaving me sleepy and weak from this morning’s workout. I’m gonna go pass out. More later, if I read this over and it has any coherence and deserves follow-up.

Sorry about that hiccup in your RSSes. It’s been since February that the two of you who read this have gotten a chance to use me to kill time at work, and I apologize for that. I will try to resume my blogging schedule. You’re welcome.

The thing is, though, that it’s been a really long time. So the idea of catching up is daunting. So I won’t. You probably already know, for instance, that my confectionery skills are paying off in spades (I’m in Maxim & Elle this month! Holy shitballs!), that my cat is unwieldy (not a metaphor), that I’ve been basically going crazy trying to absorb an MBA’s worth of education from the ether, and that… actually, I guess that’s it. everything else is sort of an elucidation of the above, or a reason to brag about the girls I made out with at Bay to Breakers (all of them).

Oh. And I’m turning 30 in a few quick months and still don’t know what I’m doing to celebrate the blessed event.

So I’ll start back on the solipsism track, but we’ll start from here, rather than from February. More soon, I promise.

My MySpace page says that I started blogging in the beginning of 2003. I’m starting to think that it’s all counterintuitive.

I’m not sure why I feel that it’s important to preen. When I started this it was because I had a job that seemed noteworthy, although looking back it was more gross than anything else- and I knew it at the time. Maybe making a production of it was my way of showing that I wasn’t ashamed or weirded out by the whole thing. Maybe the whole thing has been an extension of that.

I’m starting to think that maybe I should stop blogging.

There’s the issue of privacy: I know my friends who read it on a regular basis, who’ve RSSed me, who have any reason to give a shit. Not only does it sometimes come up in conversation- “Oh, I already know that; I read your blog.”- but it’s in my stats. I know who’s bored at work, and I can tell when someone’s randomly clicking through, say, Shayna’s page. But then there’s the unknowns- people who didn’t click on anything, who have IP addresses that don’t seem to relate to people I know, and who couldn’t possibly have found me through search engines. I turned off my searchability a long time ago, so Google can’t see me. Against my best judgment, I didn’t lock down the site, and I continued to rattle on about where I was going and what I was doing and all sorts of personal stuff- and this for no real reason. The more I think about it, the more I feel like those IP addresses are creepy, and that I don’t want those people knowing about my life.

Also, I feel as though writing here keeps me from actually talking. That it’s a surrogate friend, a crutch that I very much do not need. I have a giant and varied social network, and I don’t think that I give the individuals that make it a giant, varied thing that it is the attention they deserve. This thing keeps me from feeling as though I need to talk with them, and I sometimes feel that I’m missing things on account of it. I go through phases where I feel, for lack of a better term, as though I’m forgetting how to communicate, and I’m starting to feel that way again. So many of my relationships are party relationships, and communication takes place in two second bursts of flirtation and one liners. Nothing wrong with that, but I’m feeling as though I have very few people with whom I spend one-on-one time.

So I’m going to stop using this blog as a bulletin board. I’ll keep writing in it, but in the next few days I’m locking it down and requiring approval before I let people read it. I’m not under any misapprehension of literary greatness, I’m just feeling somewhat uncomfortable allowing my private life to go on being a public spectacle. So here’s what: if you’d like to read my blog, get a WordPress account and let me know what your username is. I’ll put it on the approved list. I get 35 before WordPress’ll start wanting me to pay, but I don’t think there’ll be too much crowding.

In a bit, I’ll start writing on two separate blogs: one where all I talk is professional bullshit: promotion, marketing, and PR (a la Jenks’ blog); and one where I get to be all period-y and preen-y and whatever (but that’ll just be for the friends who have nothing better to do with their eyeballs and my mom).

That’s it. Lemme know if you want a password. Or a cup of coffee sometime soon.

I just caught Monica looking up the definition of “definition.” It has a Wikipedia page.

Erik, thank you for the tivoing and the youtubing.

Prepare yourselves: this is pretty dull. In fact, the show seems to have been designed as a punishment for anyone who watches it.

Things I now know about teevee:

• The coffee cups are full of water.
• News anchors- when they’re writing on pads at the break are actually writing notes to each other.
• No one says “action” under any circumstances. Like, even when you ask.
• Interns really act the way they do in movies. “You’re going to love Rosy. She’ll keep you in stitches. Amazing woman. Amazing.” That’s a direct quote, and it was apropo of nothing.
• My eyes apparently bug out a bit. I did not know that. This isn’t about teevee per se, but whatever.

Here it is:

Also, I started a twitter account, which I will use a whole bunch at first but will forget within about three months.

For the two of you who read this and the one of you who noticed, Mon & I are being interviewed today for a show that airs on Saturday. So if you woke up at 6:15, put your teevee-watching pants & hat on, made popcorn, and anxiously sat through early morning teevee, then I apologize. Do it all over again on Saturday.

Sorry.

I spent the last two days building a site for Capture the Flag SNowball Fight (set your bookmarks to www.ctfsf.com, kids). I don’t have the newsletter sign-up function up yet, and  the dates for upcoming games aren’t real (obvs.), but everything else is pretty much finished.  Oh, except the links are ugly. I’ll fix that tomorrow. Dunno who I chose “insane green” for a mouseover color.

Thanks to Hunter’s advice, I’m now happily reading much fiction. I’m in the middle of Lolita and All the King’s Men, and I just finished The Puppet Masters and am looking forward to Tropic of Cancer.  Yay, “best of” lists!

Also, interesting trivialty: no one is too sure as to the mechanism that allows cats to purr. My favorite sentence in the article is the explanation for why:

Partly because the cat has no obvious anatomical feature unique to it that would be responsible and may also be partly because a cat placed in a laboratory for examination is unlikely to make the noise.

(italics mine).

Also, Mon & I are gonna be on the teevee tomorrow! We’re being interviewed by Bay Area People, which is, as I mentioned in my last post, kind of the Bay Area’s Good Morning America in that it airs at 6:30, seems to involve floral print, and is serious in a banal, kind of boring way. I’m not sure why they want us, but they had a phone interview with us and decided we were perfect. Mine will be the first bleached Afro in the history of the show (no research here, I’m just guessing). Muffy & Erik are both TiVoing it for us so we don’t have to wake up for it, and we’ll put it on YouTube when it’s ready. Meantime, check the show out and try to imagine Mon & I on it. What’s the demographic? Insomniac 80-year-olds?

Seriously: I sent this out two days ago, and as a result we’re being picked up by (beyond the normal high-profile local blogs) KQED and are being interviewed by the local equivalent of Good Morning America next Wednesday.

Hi, Press Peoples!

Still worn out from those nasty, so-last-year 2007 parties? Consider this a breath of fresh air: it’s a 2008 party! You’ve probably never been to one before (NYE doesn’t count because you didn’t sleep- it was a 2007 party that just happened to spill over into ‘08).
What: Sweet! The first clothing swap of 2008!
Where: CELLspace (2030 Bryant St. between 19th & 20th) map
When: Saturday, January 19th,12-3pm
How much: $5 ($10 without clothes)
Details:

• 10,000 square feet of free clothes shopping at SF’s only temporary autonomous clothing store!
• Delectable beats by the handsome/beautiful tagteam extraordinare: Poolboy & D (4handed)!
• On-site screenprinting & tailoring to make your so-so finds a slice of indiewear bliss!
• $2 Trumer Pils & wine
• Free Meth Coffee (but BYOC, or $2)!
• Absinthe lollipops by Lit Lollipops!
• Two-way philanthropy- we’ll take your clothes off your hands and out of your closet, and leftover clothes will be donated to local charities, including (but very much not limited to) The Stop AIDS Project, Dolores Street Community Services and A Safe Place for Women,
• Other stuff as it comes up! (because “And more!” sounds cheesy, but we really need to give ourselves wiggle room)

This event fills up very quickly, so we suggest that people show up early (aphorisms re: birds & worms, etc. Also see William Blake: “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence,” although that somehow seems a bit harsh for this scenario). If you would like tickets to pass out to your audience, please let me know immediately as giveaways are a first-come first-served sitch. If I can help you with anything else- pictures, interviews, compliments… please let me know and I won’t let you down. I’m no longer attaching posters to these press releases, as too many editors inboxes seem to get gummed up by them. However, if you’re interested, the poster can be found here: http://www.swapsf.com/sweetswapflyerlarge.html.

xo, and happy new year!

About SwapSF
SwapSF (www.swapsf.com) throws monthly swap parties featuring cheap drinks, local underground DJs, and all the (depending on the event) clothes/books/music/whatever you can carry. These parties raise needed items for local charities and leave participants with a less-cluttered home. For more information about SwapSF, including sponsorship, volunteering, or requests for donations, please email Monica (monica at swapsf.com). Press contacts are invited to contact Jason (jason at swapsf.com) for interviews, articles, images, or to invite him to various social outings. He cleans up well.

I know I’ve said it before, but as I was making a damn-near perfect batch of lollipops, I realized that I’d forgotten it and had better write it down:

I think that everyone is between three to 12 hours of focused practice away from being more than passable at any given skill. Double that and you can get away with being the CEO of damn near any given company.

(Andy, me, Damien & Pete being debonair at the Holiday Formal) 

Last year kicked ass. Even the parts that didn’t kick ass kicked ass. I:

• rocked unemployment,
• co-threw 6 swaps of increasing attendance and success,
• started a business that looks to become successful (provided I keep with it),
• started school again, and got all A’s, except for a science class, which I got a B in, but fuck it- I don’t need hard science for a graphic design degree, right?
• managed to keep my cat alive for a year,
• was in a few art shows & sold a few pieces in the process, which in turn got me back into painting, which is dope,
• didn’t die or get sick from anything lethal (I don’t think),
• visited a all the museums in SF (except the Asian Art Museum, which is so on my upcoming list), and the International Banana Museum.
• was in a few different newspapers, yet didn’t achieve fame to the extent that I was required to become an asshole,
• made a few friends and grew tighter with preexisting ones,
• and other stuff, I’m sure.

Meantime, here’s what’s happened in the past month:

• The lolly biz took off, allowing me to experience what online sales is like (it’s really cool- you go to bed and wake up with more money).
• Xmas party went really well (pics!)
• As did the book swap (pics!)
• As did the dinner party from two nights ago that turned, as dinner parties do, into an impromptu drug-fueled near-orgy (no pics, duh),
• As did the wandering dinner party that didn’t turn into an drug-fueled near-orgy, but was quite lovely and involved ingredients that I had to look up because Shannon is a fucking amazing chef and makes dishes like “Duck braised in banyuls and turnip-parsnip gratin with prunes”. (I had to look up banyuls.)
• I started two new paintings, one of which is almost done,
• Mon & I spent Christmas with Chris & Chai and their kids out in Sonoma,
• I’ve started the wheels in motion for the January 19th, 2008 clothing swap, and it looks like it’s going to once again trump all the preceding swaps (we’ve already had over 30 people ask to volunteer), meaning that we might need to start looking for an even bigger space than CELLspace, which is crazy,
• and I started experimenting with lollipop flavor #2, a flavor that may very well change the concept of lollipops forever.

Coming soon:

• The 2008 swap.
• I’m going to complete redo the lolly site to allow for a new flavor each month or so. I also have to start looking into packaging & advertising.
• I’m going to start work on an online portfolio of my design & artwork to use as a way of picking up freelance gigs (because I’m not deluded enough to assume that I’m getting rich from lollys anytime soon).
• Spring classes start up again (and I haven’t picked any classes yet! Whee!
• Hopefully I’ll be able to MC Melvin’s NYE party (provided he still needs me- I retardedly declined at first and only today took stock of my life and realized that I’ll live to regret doing so…).
• Planning Monica’s 30th birthday (oh, it’s gonna be awesome!).
• Planning the upcoming book swap (no deets yet).

So I’m still busy. I want to ride my bike, but the outdoors is made from crap right now so no fun. Still, I really should do something. Dunno what. This week is an odd doldrum, where nothing seems too pressing and not too much gets done, but I suck at relaxing.