Footie-themed spam.

And I don't mean footsie. I've been spending a lot of the last couple weeks watching Euro Cup 2008, and since I feel awkward calling it soccer, I've been calling it footie half the time. Reminds me of being in England I guess. At least I haven't been referring to it as "the beautiful game."

The spam-a-lots have been sending me hilarious Euro-themed spam this week. Portugal lost to Germany last week and I got an email with the subject line "Germany shows Portugal the strength in an extra inch."

Today I got one with subject line "Euro 2008 predictions & analysis". The email read, "Mine is long enough that 2 girls can suck on my hotdog at any time."

From the archives (paper).

9/18/17/06.

In a greenhouse. Cafe Gigi. I can regrettably smell my feet. Best to put them back in their shoes for my companion's sake. A BMW just pulled out and now a Mercedes is pulling in. The BMW operator was a better driver. He is reading Descartes across from me while I've stopped sucking in my stomach. I thought I was going to be sick earlier but a torrent of food and carbonated water seems to have settled the uprising. The driver of the Mercedes is on crutches. This strikes me as a strange sight. But I suppose you only need one good foot to drive.

Just read excerpts of Susan Sontag's journals and want to be more like her. Read three heartbreaking short stories this weekend and don't think I'll read any more. I'd finish a story, meditate on its details and strengths, then fall into uneasy dreams. I need something upbeat. Or characters in less pain. Maybe some humor.

Sontag was a "NY intellectual." I wonder how she became that way, how she gained entry into the circles she circumferenced, when her journals reveal the sort of stifling self-doubt and insecurity of someone I wouldn't expect to easily hold her own against the likes of Jasper Johns, Sartre, and Lillian Hellman. She is human. She is vulnerable. She has something worth saying. I feel I could be like her. But I think that's a bit generous.

The tiramisu between us is mostly gone. A couple are perched on the stoop across the street. It's a quiet block, and the whirr of the air conditioner is a surprisingly comforting drone. It trumps the couples, the cars, and the intermittent chaos. I hope it's helping him study. I hope I have one good story in me, or if I'm lucky, one good novel.

I am very very sleepy. These streets are too narrow and stacked with garbage bags for tomorrow's pickup. I've been thinking about slotted spoons. I saw an adorable baby today. And some precious dogs in Madison Square Park. I really wanted to hold something.

The NYT was silly today.

First there was this:

Then there was this:

The mind of the wine consumer is a woolly place, packed with odd and arcane information fascinating to few. Like the pants pocket of a 7-year-old boy, it’s full of bits of string, bottle caps and shiny rocks collected while making the daily rounds of wine shops, restaurants, periodicals and the wine-soaked back alleys of the Internet. It’s harmless stuff, really, except to those within earshot when a wine lover finds it necessary to elaborate on the nose, legs and body of a new infatuation.

I don't think a sentence should ever start, "Like the pants pocket of a 7-year-old boy..." And then the end of the paragraph called to mind more perversion: "...elaborate on the nose, legs and body of a new infatuation."

Woolly place! My mind is a woolly place!

Recent reads.

I dropped the ball on this blog again. But I think I'll continue to use it as a place to record the books I've read, considering that recording my thoughts and musings on a regular basis is apparently too difficult for me.

So, the books I have consumed in the past 6.9 months:
"A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," Janna Levin
"The Namesake," Jhumpa Lahiri
"A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway
"Cloud Atlas," David Mitchell
"No Country for Old Men," Cormac McCarthy
"Shortcomings," Adrian Tomine
"Wuthering Heights," Emily Brontë
"Look Back in Anger," John Osbourne
"Paris France," Gertrude Stein (abandoned halfway through in favor of starting "The Savage Detectives")

My primal response to each, in chronological order:
Ugh.
Luff!
Waaa.
Meh.
Hmmm.
Wow.
Bahaha.
Waaa.
Meh.

"The Savage Detectives" is great so far. Looking at past entries, I realize I also read "Go Tell It On the Mountain" by James Baldwin somewhere in the past year and a half, though I can't recall when. It was just OK.

I love my crunchy hometown.

Back in San Francisco for Thanksgiving again, and wondering how many more of these there will be. My grandma's turning 93 this year, and I have no clue whether our yearly family reunions will continue when she's gone. I know I've always been curious to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends, or go to someone's house that is closer to NY than California is. It's something I've never known.

Coming home for Thanksgiving was the bane of my existence for a long time—I hated talking to people about my life in New York because I always seemed to be having a depressed autumn. I found the Saturday night Chinese banquet exhausting and superficial. I dreaded going home so much that I'd get completely plastered the night before and miss my flight (this has happened twice). But perhaps sooner than I'd like I'll have a choice when it comes to this bizarre holiday.

Our house is too big. We lose each other easily. We yell unnecessarily.

Our dog is short of memory and endlessly amusing. I talk to him and he seems to remember who I am. I like driving with him in the passenger seat.

The city has completely gotten rid of plastic bags in supermarkets, and every place sells eco-totes or the like. The powers that be are also looking into turning restaurants' used vegetable oil into biodiesel. All the beans at the coffee shop are fair trade. We have a philandering mayor.

Our family are foregoing our usual brined turkey and making a 10-lb standing rib roast instead. The oil spill has made Bay Area seafood unsafe to eat, but 100,000 pounds of crabs just arrived from Oregon, so maybe tomorrow we will have our usual first course of cracked Dungeness crabs.

Fung Tai made a fresh batch of tea eggs at my sister's and my request. I must get a recipe from her, but it will be a test of my Cantonese to do so.

My small independent high school just started teaching Mandarin. I'm seeing a friend from high school tonight who I haven't seen in about 5 years. I've reconnected with a few people from high school within the past two weeks, and it's been surprisingly refreshing. Maybe I'm ready to face all the things that made me want to leave San Francisco. I keep saying I want to move back to the Bay Area next year, but I don't know how much I believe it. Every time I come back to visit it feels like a trial run, though it really isn't because I'm in my parents' house on my parents' schedule.

I do love this city though. It makes me proud to be from here.

Back with a vengeance.

I used to love blogging. But I ran out of time. I took that job. I quit that job. I moved to Brooklyn. I ate my words.

And I read more books (and started and stopped a few):
"My Life and Hard Times," James Thurber
"Austerlitz," W.G. Sebald
"Stiff," Mary Roach
"On Beauty," Zadie Smith
"Chicken with Plums," Marjane Satrapi
"A Confederacy of Dunces," John Kennedy Toole
"Slouching Towards Bethlehem," Joan Didion
"The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald (again)
"A Pale View of Hills," Kazuo Ishiguro
"Dipa Ma," Amy Schmidt
"The Devil in the White City," Erik Larson
"Little Children," Tom Perrotta
A few selections from "The Thing on the Doorstep" by H.P. Lovecraft, before I got too spooked.
A few stories from "You Are Not A Stranger Here" by Adam Haslett, which gave me very bad dreams.

I want to start writing again. I missed this.

Upgrading from grizzly to polar.

Fall is here, and so of course winter is inevitable. Which means that I will start posting gratuitous pictures of polar bears and penguins. Here's a cutie preview:

Tidbits.

* I really think I should pursue a career as an obituary writer for The New York Times. Here's why.
* Weather.com desperately needs a new slogan. "Bringing weather to life" doesn't make any sense. As far I know, weather is already very much... alive.
* The other day I compared my friend's semi-unemployed live-in boyfriend to a Roomba.

“Do you like scary movies?”

Pandas and beer don't mix.

From Yahoo! News comes this lovely story about a drunk Chinese migrant worker and a panda named Gu Gu.

Panda Bites Man, Man Bites Him Back

BEIJING - A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal's back, state media said Wednesday.

Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.

"He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand," and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.

The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.

"I bit the fellow in the back," Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. "Its skin was quite thick."

Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.

Newspaper photographs showed Zhang lying on a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages and a seam of stitches running down his leg.

The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang as saying that he had seen pandas on television and "they seemed to get along well with people."

"No one ever said they would bite people," Zhang said. "I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don't remember much."

Ye Mingxia, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Zoo, confirmed the incident happened but would not give any details. She said Gu Gu was "healthy."

"We're not considering punishing him now," Ye said in a telephone interview. "He's suffered quite a bit of shock."

Web wonders.

A tidbit I spotted in an article in New York Times's Business section:

Comcast was burned by the Web in June when one of its repairmen fell asleep on the couch in the home of a customer, who then videotaped the napping repairman and posted the video online. Within two weeks, 200,000 people had viewed the video.

On another note, brief brushes with Susan Sontag and Henry Miller's writings have convinced me that I need to go to Paris.

Speaking of art...

I won Napkin Idol again, though I faced some pretty stiff competition (see runner-up). Also, I can’t draw people to save my life. And yes, the second place winner’s napkin reads “Sombrero wearing dude peeing on wall (bird’s eye view)”. Genius.



As much as I love my neighborhood bar, I am quickly learning that participating in the bar’s weekly contest comes with the annoyance of listening to the bartender talk at me while I'm trying to concentrate on my napkin doodle. And these bartenders aren’t particularly funny or interesting. Plus, they’re somewhat aggressive. All in all it’s like painfully bad stand-up, with the perpetrator staring directly at me, expecting me to laugh. Not to mention the fact that I barely get to talk to the person I’m there with, who I’m dying to catch up with.

So next time I have a game plan. I’m grabbing a stack of napkins and my companion and hightailing it to the couches by the pool table. I like free drinks and all, but I don’t like being preached to about William Shatner, Monday Night Football, your Austrian girlfriend, and President Bush. And don’t get me started on “So a guy walks into a bar” jokes. Good lord.

Art opening tonight.

Maia is friends with an amazing Toronto-based artist named Nick di Genova who I have had the pleasure of drinking with a couple times. His laidback, humble and softspoken demeanor only make his painstakingly detailed work more incredible. His personality betrays no hint that he dreams of exquisitely terrifying apocalyptic animals.

He's having a solo show in New York and I'll be at the opening with my proverbial bells on. I can't wait to see his colorful, large-scale pieces close up, and hopefully I can even afford to buy a small piece. I truly believe he deserves accolades, and I'm pleased with how far his art has taken him, considering he's the anti-self-promoter.

Here's a sample of his work, and there's much more here. If you're looking for me tonight between the hours of 6 and 8, I'll be the one at the gallery double fisting wine and smiling like an idiot.

Talk nerdy to me.

Last week I went to a gallery opening here and struck up a conversation with a scruffy biker kid while waiting in line for wine. He had noticed my Amoeba tote bag and told me he was from Berkeley. I told him I was from San Francisco and that the bag was a good conversation starter.

I realized later, because I am a nerdy linguist, that I meant it in two ways – with “good” modifying “conversation starter” as well as “good” modifying “conversation”. Meeting people from the Bay Area is always rewarding. Comforting, even. The conversations that develop thanks to my good conversation starter invariably turn out to be good.

I miss home, as usual.

I am Blongholio, need TP for my bloghole.

Thursday at work, I realized my boss had left the office early, before I got to run something by him. I was chatting with another co-worker, who reassured me that he wasn’t going to be tied up, that I could easily just call his cell phone if I had any issues.

“He’s just picking up his son,” she said. “He’s totally reachable.”
“Right,” I replied. “It’s not like he’s getting a prostate exam or something.”

She laughed, and I realized I had just unleashed another one of my characteristic conversation-enders. Why do I say these things? Why do they pop into my head? The sad part is that I can clearly remember the way my brain came to the conclusion that this should come out of my mouth. It went something like this:

Try to say something witty --> think of some procedure where you’re basically incapacitated and would not be able to pick up your phone --> oh, a colonoscopy! --> but colonoscopies require 24 hours of prep time so this would create logical barriers to a successful funny, as my boss has clearly been in the office all day --> think of something else that an older man would be subjected to that would make him unreachable --> how about a prostate exam?

So in conclusion, my brain is definitely functioning in top form, and my thoughts are logical to a point. I'm just a little stuck in the toilet is all.

L'art du Federer.

I've learned a few things this weekend, including the fact that watching an entire men's tennis match makes me very sleepy. No matter how hard I try, it seems the pok-pok sounds of the ball going back and forth easily become a makeshift lullaby. So as I watched the men's final alone in my living room just now, the room growing progressively darker as the sun set, and Roddick trying to feed off the crowd's energy, I promptly shut my eyes towards the end of the third set and through the first four games of the fourth.

The same lethargy befell me yesterday, when I was actually sitting in the stands at Arthur Ashe Stadium for the Roddick-Youzhny semifinal. I was exhausted as it was, from not enough sleep, then running errands in the city and Brooklyn, and then rushing to Queens, totally unsure what matches I would catch and whether I'd even get in. I fell asleep on the G train on the way to the 7 train, then managed to stay awake on the 7 thanks to a greasy slice of pizza and a car full of choral camp girls sharing their renditions of Disney classics.

I snuck into the US Open yesterday, thanks to my best friend's procurement of a co-worker's badge. I strolled in to the "Credentials Only" area armed with my tote bag and an ID around my neck bearing a photo of a grinning wide-eyed white girl, whose hair somewhat resembled mine. Once inside, my friend told me there was little chance I'd actually make it into the stadium with that badge, because the badge's denomination limited me to certain areas, and did not at all constitute as a ticket for a seat.

Nonetheless, I walked right in, casually flashed my badge and did my best to look benign. I managed to sit in the field seats for about ten minutes, and had an amazing view. Then a guard approached and asked if I had a ticket, because I guess I looked suspicious taking tons of photos and sending text messages to everyone I knew. Weakly flashing my credentials again, she told me to go upstairs. I did, and easily found myself a spot in the bleachers. It was by no means a full house. So I sat there, baking in the sun, sandwiched between two cold blondes, but all in all extremely pleased with myself.

Then came the wave of sleepy, and I struggled to shade my eyes from the brutal sun. The flirtation with naptime didn't last too long, as the fear that my neighbors would notice set in, as well as the realizaton that I was feebly using an envelope holding the lease I'd just signed to cover my eyes, and god forbid I drop it in the stands if I really nodded off. It was exhilarating, really, to know that I'd pulled off a rather difficult feat, and that I had not been so deterred by the possibility of failure to not even try in the first place. Once I saw that I was way past the point of being caught without a ticket, I started to rest on my laurels, enjoy the match, and let my heartrate stabilize. The people to my left carried on inane conversation about celebrities, and at one point the woman on my right who resembled Camilla Parker-Bowles took out a Wetnap and rubbed it all over her face.

Roddick won, but Youzhny's game was extremely exciting. I did wish a little that I had a companion, but I think part of the reason I was able to succeed at sneaking in was that I was a single, unobtrusive woman. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to know someone who was working at the Open, and to celebrate the $80 I saved by having the balls to jump security, I bought myself a very large $9 beer in a commemorative cup.

Too bad the Open's over now, but I'm glad I made this one somewhat special for me. I hope one day I'll get to watch Federer play live, and I'm glad he won today, because he absolutely deserved it.

Lulu will be airborne in 30 hours.

I'm flying to LA Saturday morning and I'm quite excited. There will be sunshine, good food, and hugs. Last night I had a nightmare about being stuck in the airport -- I couldn't find my gate, I misplaced my check-in luggage somewhere on the way to checking it in, and all sorts of other very frustrating setbacks befell me. I also remember being unable to buy things in the duty-free shop because I was only traveling domestically. It was just not a good dream at all.

I've been visiting the Transit Security page obsessively so that I'll know what I can actually bring onboard. It looks like I'll definitely be packing my sword and billy club in my check-in luggage, but luckily I will be able to bring my gel-filled bra onto the plane, as well as up to 4 oz. of KY Jelly. I'm glad the TSA hasn't gone so far as to ban the real essentials.

Squee!

I just had an interview at a big international ad agency, and I think it went really well! I also realized through the interview that I really want the job. It seems like a perfect fit for me! This all came up because my old boss gave my name to a recruiter who got in touch with me and has been scouting out jobs for me, shopping me around, and such. This agency expressed interest in meeting me. I am a wanted woman.

I'm so delighted by how I handled it that I'm going to treat myself to a glass of wine and some chickpeas.

It's the one-year anniversary (seriously, to the day) of when I began working at my current job, and I love how I've commemorated it by taking the day off to interview at another agency. Too awesome.

Good casting.

I just saw Little Miss Sunshine and loved it. The acting was great all the way through, and the quirkiness never felt forced. I went with Brian, who of course stopped enjoying the movie the moment it got at all sentimental – that boy is so emotionally unreachable, it’s a wonder we’re still friends.

So after IMDb’ing the movie, which I now do every time I see a film, I found out that Steve Carell will be playing Maxwell Smart in a movie adaptation of Get Smart! This makes me so freakishly happy, having spent hours and hours as a kid watching reruns on Nick at Nite. Maxwell Smart is so endearingly stupid, and I completely trust Steve Carell to portray him appropriately.

I was sad to hear that Don Adams, who originated the role, died last year. I think you could safely say I was obsessed with that show. I was probably around 10 when I started watching it religiously.

And I was also somewhat infatuated by Barbara Feldon as 99, because she was so glamorous and graceful and forgiving. I saw her on a daytime talk show a couple years ago, touting her new book about singledom. She looked amazing, and was talking about how monogamy and lifelong companionship are somewhat against human nature, that the life of an older single woman can be as fulfilling if not more so than the life of a happily married woman. It's an interesting angle, and her book describes how much she loves living on her own, and gives suggestions for how to make the most of it. After watching her tolerate Maxwell Smart as a husband (“Oh, Max” and all that), it was exciting to see her dispelling the myth that an older unmarried woman has somehow failed to experience one of life’s great joys.

As a kid I entertained the notion that Barbara Feldon and Pat Benatar were the same person. Spy by day, rock star by night? (I was a Jem fan, after all.) It didn’t cross my mind that the Barbara Feldon I admired existed in the ‘60s, the Pat Benatar I saw photos of had her heyday in the ‘80s, and I was a confused pre-teen taking it all in in the ‘90s.

Picasso loved his doggie.

I woke up this morning and read a Times piece about Picasso's other muse, a little dachshund named Lump.

Here he is at the bottom of one of Picasso's reinterpretations of "Las Melinas":


There's a new book out about the man and his dog. In a series of intimate portraits by the photographer David Douglas Duncan, the former owner of the dog, he frames the oft-misunderstood artist as an

affectionate family man with a sentimental attachment to a funny little dog...In Mr. Duncan’s photographs, the dachshund is seen around the dining table at mealtimes, and in one shot he even stands on Picasso’s lap to eat off the artist’s plate. In another, Picasso cradles Lump in his arms as he might a baby.

My favorite line from this little tale is near the end, before we find out that Lump and Picasso died within a week of each other. Duncan remarks, "Picasso had many dogs, but Lump was the only one he took in his arms."

In honor of Lump I am going to have a hot dog for dinner.

I like tennis.

And apparently so does David Foster Wallace. But he’s a real expert about it, and certainly more articulate than me. I loved his article in The New York Times about Roger Federer. I especially like how he subverted the traditional Times format by adding extensive footnotes and footnotes’ footnotes (not sure what those are called). I’m sure on paper it wasn’t so distracting, but having to open a full window of footnotes on my browser and switch back and forth while reading was a refreshingly annoying challenge.

If I tried to write about tennis it would probably go something like this:

Dude, Roger Federer is awesome! And since his mother and I have the same name, I think by some Oedipal logic that means we’re meant for each other. I’d like to have lunch with him. Oh, Lleyton Hewitt just hit the ball really hard! Man, that was a zinger! He looks more and more like an asshole every day. I hope James Blake kicks his ass. What’re the ladies doing? I love watching Maria Sharapova. But I think the reason she’s so captivating is because she doesn't seem like a terribly pleasant person. She just has the coldest, sexiest stare. And really makes me want to buy a Canon PowerShot.

Aside from a plethora of juicy adjectives and what seems like a decades long interest in the game, DFW is also very clever. My favorite bit in his article is this footnoted bit about Ivan Lendl:

Formwise, with his whippy forehand, lethal one-hander, and merciless treatment of short balls, Lendl somewhat anticipated Federer. But the Czech was also stiff, cold, and brutal; his game was awesome but not beautiful. (My college doubles partner used to describe watching Lendl as like getting to see “Triumph of the Will” in 3-D.)

I imagine that watching me eat the morning after heavy drinking is like watching a live-action version of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

I’m totally teenybopperishly excited about the U.S. Open. And I think I'm ready to read my first Foster Wallace book.

For just $24, you can own this.

Just go to dELiA*s.com:

Another Monday night.

I spend a good deal of time compiling observations and factoids I’d like to tell a person who does not exist. I wish this person did, and I make a note of these things in the hopes that he will one day pop up. He’s a fantasy. He’s the person I can talk about anything with. He is intellectually my equal. He knows about a lot of things, but I can still teach him something. And he challenges me. He’s a good listener and he loves the way I think, finds it charming even. And as a team we help restore each other’s hope for humanity on a daily basis.

Here are some of the things I mentally order and hope to verbalize one day to this mysterious, nonexistent person:

“I went to this café down the block for lunch today. The cashier was a rather butch woman who yelled at the chef to see if they had any red peppers. They didn’t. I took my food upstairs to this empty dining area that had big trays set up as if for a buffet. I wrote a letter to my mom on panda stationary. I told her I wanted to be just like her. Then I started to tear up because I missed her. I missed everyone.”

“I stopped reading Brick Lane on page 93. I couldn’t relate to the characters. I was reading for reading’s sake, but not enjoying it. I like immigrant stories very much, but ones tinged with humor. And if not humor, then beautiful prose. This book had neither, in my opinion. Now I am reading Empire Falls and enjoying it slightly more, though I feel detached from it as well. Have you read any Richard Russo? Do you think I am unable to quite imagine these people and their mentality because I am not from a small town? Also, there’s no element of race so far and that always interests me. I have a feeling I am not the book’s intended audience.”

“Do you think therapists talk to their spouses about their patients? Does my therapist go home and say, ‘Lulu was really off today, I think she has a serious mood disorder,’ and then roll over and fall asleep?”

“I think the deli guy at Fairway got fired. He was always hitting on all the ladies, and one day I came in and saw he had a black eye. It freaked me out. And if I was his manager and was trying to keep the customers from feeling scared of the man handling their cold cuts, I might’ve let him go. He didn’t always have the best attitude and he seemed like a bit of a slacker. I dunno, I haven’t seen him since, so I assume he’s gone.”

“Have you ever thought that you might want to be a dog, or a baby? Sometimes when I’m on the street and feel like my life is too much to handle, I get jealous of babies and dogs, that they have people tending to them all the time, and have no worries in the world. It sounds ridiculous, but these thoughts cross my mind.”

And so on.

I don’t get to share these daily observances with anybody. And I get the feeling that being able to share these things is a necessary ingredient to a fulfilling life. I guess I want someone to report to every day, to empty out all the things stewing in my mind and get a second opinion. And I want to know what he’s been thinking about all day too, and what sorts of things he saw on the street and at work that were just confounding. I want to share my life with someone, feel part of something that grows together.

I want someone who knows me so well that he can sense how I’m feeling without my having to say it. And who asks all the right questions. And who knows the difference between being comforting and coddling. Someone who, if we went on $100,000 Pyramid together, would know what I was trying to convey instantly, and vice versa. We'd be unstoppable.

I’ve come to two conclusions.

1) I suffer from crippling loneliness.
2) I have been watching too much Game Show Network.

Solace?

I may be an emotional wreck, but at least I'm aware of it. That has to count for something, right?

This is too funny.

From MSNBC:

Man Survives Run-in With Falling Dog

WARSAW - A man was bruised but alive on Wednesday after a Saint Bernard dog thrown out a two-story window landed on him as he was walking down the street in the southern-Polish city of Sosnowiec.

The 110-pound dog was pushed out of the window by its drunken owner on Monday, police said.

"The dog had a soft landing because it fell on a man," said police spokesman Grzegorz Wierzbicki. "The dog escaped with just a few scratches."

"The man was also more in a psychological state of shock than physically hurt," Wierzbicki added.

If bad things happen in threes...

I'm scared to find out what's coming next.

My friend told me he's getting a divorce. He and his wife have been together for ten years. He's in his early 30's. She's been out of the country doing a Fulbright for almost a year, but dropped in on him last week to speed up the proceedings. It seems the distance didn't work in their favor. I keep thinking that he must be very lonely. He seemed to have resigned himself to a pretty solitary life when she first left, but now it must be completely different, not waiting for her to come home anymore.

My co-worker's father passed away. I think he had Lou Gehrig's disease. My co-worker moved here from San Francisco to be closer to him. He hasn't been here long -- only a few months. I half wonder if he's going to turn around and go back to SF. I don't think he knows too many people here yet. He's someone who I've decided I would like to be a friend to, see outside of work. But I don't know how he'll be when he comes back from bereavement leave. Since I constantly think about my own dad's inevitable demise, the fact that it's befallen him now makes me very sad.

It was raining earlier today. Now it's warm and I'm off to a pizza party at Maia's. I'm listening to "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" by Belle and Sebastian and remembering how comforting it is.

We're winners.

Che and I got first and second place in our local bar's weekly Napkin Idol contest. The competition for the 9 pm judging was fierce, so we submitted our nappies for the 11:30 edition.

My drawing is a rendering of a story the bartender told us about fishing a Blackberry out of the bar's plumbing system last weekend.



In other news, I have Elvis Costello's "Everyday I Write The Book" stuck in my head real bad.

Recent reads.

Dwayne Hoover had oodles of charm.

I can have oodles of charm if I want to.

A lot of people have oodles of charm.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

When I got home from work today I headed for my bed, as is too often my way. I listened to some Hot Water Music, a reminder of my brief interest in hardcore. I still enjoy their songs. The only times I’ve ever thought I might die while watching a band play were the two occasions I saw Hot Water Music play the Knitting Factory. I was with Kate both times. We don’t talk anymore.

The second time I saw them there, when I was more familiar with their music, the dirty blond guitarist (bassist?) who I’d never seen say a word before broke my heart with a short speech about 9/11. He spoke eloquently about how moving it was for him that people came out to their shows right after all that had happened and told them their stories. That it changed his life. That he was doing the only thing he knew how to do and hoped it would ease somebody else’s pain. That connecting with those lost, conflicted kids in uncertain times was what kept him from feeling numb, and reminded him that he was alive.

I knew what he was talking about, that thirst for connection, the wave of fear and paralysis that 9/11 wrought. When he was done, we shouted in solidarity. I wanted to hug him. But more moshing ensued, and I once again feared that the last image I’d see on this earth was a steel-toed boot headed straight for my face.

Write, and you’ll feel better.

I am a pendulum. This is how I’ve felt in the past 8 days.

Monday July 24: Angry, irritable.
Monday evening post 9 pm: Positively energized. Optimistic.
Tuesday: Great.
Wednesday: Driven. Independent. Goofy.
Thursday: Hopeful. Successful.
Thursday evening post 9 pm: Angry, alone, fat, desperately imperfect.
Friday: More of the same. Profoundly upset. Luckily it was a half day.
Friday post-Caitlin: Tons better.
Saturday: Wonderful. Euphoric. Invigorated. Determined.
Sunday: More of the same. Likeable, connected, charming.
Monday: Good.
Tuesday: Useless, lost, lonely, weak.
Tuesday evening: Nostalgic. Pain neutralized, but not eradicated.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Boredom? Bliss?

I sometimes feel like the strangest person in the world.