Miscellany.

A few things.

Good LORD. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings! This video is brilliant, this girl can sing and a fun fact is that the Dap Kings were the band on Amy Winehouse’s record. Wonderful. Watch this. It’s great.

Also, please read some of these books that I have suggested. I like reading. Reading is fun, exciting and also helpful. Here’s a few books that have galvanized me recently.

1. Steve Almond’s entire ouevre, but especially his first book My Life in Heavy Metal and his last book Not That You Asked. I discovered this excellent man over the summer and I have been moved, transformed, transfigured, taken to a higher plane of consciousness, whatever. So good. He writes about sex and relationships in an entirely refreshing and completely real way that I have yet to find in any other book by an author writing about the awkward, delicate time post college and pre-marriage/babies/adulthood. He’s funny. Sex scenes in his books are not the fumbling, wordy experiences you find in other books. They are clear, simple and involve all the foibles, mishaps and humor that make up the act itself. This is key. Just read his shit. It’s worth it.

*Note: I saw Steve Almond speak today with Shalom Auslander at the SF Jewish Bookfest. So, so SO good. Intelligent men, both of them, and witty and extremely erudite. I had Steve autograph 2 of my books and gushed like a simpering fangirl about my passion for his writing and muttered something about Emerson and how he taught there. Entirely embarassing. Mr. Auslander and I also discussed the Hudson Valley. He is a very angry man. More on him another day.

2. Read any Joan Didion you can get your hands on. Joan Didion’s writing on California are so good I can’t even put it into words. She captures the weirdness of the landscape and the people with clarity and intelligence. Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a good start.

3. The Collected Short Stories of Amy Hempel will teach you how to read close. Her stories are handfuls of events, brief minutes of time out of a person’s life, a quick interaction in a paragraph or two. She makes the most excellent word choices ever. She always picks the right words and they are sharp. It’s pretty amazing.

As to not make this didactic, here’s a picture of a polar bear. I also really like polar bears.

Things change.

So.

I got a job about a week ago. I am now an employee of a progressive left news aggregator and online site that raises questions about social injustice and progressive politics and whatever. I don’t know. I talked to Scott about it and we decided that I was the most likely person to get the job because I am the least political person either one of us knows. And so it goes. But now I am gainfully employed, so the blog empire that I had envisioned starting may be put on hold. I will take my knowledge of online advertising and blogs and networking and PHP and what have you and apply it to this thing. Then I will make millions. Millions.

Learning to Love You More: Assignment #37

Write down a recent argument.

Him: Why didn’t we bring coffee?

Me: We didn’t bring coffee because you don’t have a French press.

(He goes to the box in the garage and pulls out a French press.)

Him: I have one right here.

Me: You TOLD me you didn’t have one, or you didn’t know where it was or something. That’s why we didn’t bring coffee.

Him: No, I said that and then I told you I remembered we brought one when we went to Pinnacles and it was really cold. Then I said that you weren’t there, but I did have one.

Me: You didn’t remind me to get the coffee.

Him: I didn’t think I would find the French press.

Me: You want to argue about this for the rest of the night?

Him: No.

Learning to Love You More: Assignment 11.

Photograph a scar and write about it.

I got this scar on my knee at a Halloween party 2 years ago when I first moved to San Francisco. Wendy and I were sitting in her room and I was helping her glue pieces of cardboard bacon to her shirt for her costume as “breakfast”. I was changing the hot glue stick and drinking. I didn’t realize there was still glue inside so when I pushed the new stick in, a large string of hot glue fell out and onto my knee. When I peeled it off, skin came off as well. It now serves as a reminder of my dear friend Wendy and also as a cautionary tale against using craft items while drinking vodka tonics out of red Solo cups.

Miranda July Is A Fucking Genius.

I’m a bit late to the Miranda July train. I saw her amazing movie “Me, You and Everyone We Know”. I am eagerly anticipating the moment I have a job and can purchase for myself her delightful collection of short stories. I just received the book that goes along with her phenomenal earlier work “Learning to Love You More”. Please see the site.

What Ms. July has done is compiled a list of simple assignments and offered them to the world. She collected her findings on the site above and then trotted the results around the world to various museums and other venues. I saw this first at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. The book just came out and it is beautiful. There’s a lot of trite crap I could say about it and a lot of studenty I’ve-taken-an-art-crit-class-and-now-I’m-smart things I could say as well. I will avoid all those cliches. I am not nearly as knowledgeable about art as I could be and my musings will be nothing more than regurgitations of what others have said about Miranda July and about the kind of work she does. I simply ask you to look at the website. Do one of the assignments. She is really great. She is really fucking great.

I think I’m going to do this. I’m going to do some of these assignments, the little ones, the ones that I have time for and I will send them in to the site and I will also cross-post them here. I’ve got to do something with myself. I’ve cried twice looking at the book. This can only be a good thing.

Inappropriate

I was at Shoe Pavilion this afternoon standing on the escalator and listening to my iPod, not paying attention to anything that was going on around me when I noticed a diminutive security guard gesturing wildly in my general direction. I took my headphones off so I could see what he wanted.

“What are you mixed with?”

“My mom’s from Taiwan, my dad is white.” I gave a wan smile and put my headphones back in. He forged ahead. “I was going to guess that. I was going to say Taiwan.” He gave me a thumb’s up. I put my headphones back and walked out.

When did this become an appropriate question to ask? I find it rude, invasive and somehow inappropriate. I understand that the question is borne out of innocent curiosity but I still find it to be a weird one to be asked. There’s no reason for me to have to constantly identify myself to strangers and there is absolutely no reason for strangers to invade my bubble and ask me these things. I try not to make a big deal out of it because I don’t find it to be a big deal. California is hugely diverse, full of different races, genders, social identities, whatever. Great. Awesome. I didnt’ come here to seek out my half-Asian brethren and commiserate. I’m just living here. I’m trying to find a job. I’m trying to live my life. I don’t need or want to be thinking about these things and not because I’m trying to run away from myself. I’ve already dealt with this during my freshman year of college via a series of potentially embarassing ruminations on what it’s like to be bi-racial. This is no longer my trip. Please stop trying to make it as such.

ALERT: Please follow the jump for the addendum to my race relations day.

It’s all so new.

It gets easier every day. At first you feel at odds with yourself, sitting in your empty apartment at 11:30 in the morning, knowing that you need to leave the house but aren’t sure what you would do if you did. There are good things about this. The TV is never on anymore, because daytime television depresses you. Sometimes you go throw your bookshelves and make neat piles of books you wanted to read but never had the time for. You spend an inordinate amount of time plucking your eyebrows. You find yourself engaging in behaviors that are so wholly bizarre that it’s better that they are kept to yourself, in the small hours of the afternoon. You stop using utensils and plates to eat your food, instead opting to squatting in front of the refrigerator in your underwear, picking half-heartedly at a variety of foil-covered plates. You know your roommate would lose her mind if she saw you picking chunks of sausage out of the bowl with your fingers but she’s not here to witness it, so you forge ahead.

Keeping busy.

It’s really amazing how many things you can do when you don’t have anything to do at all.

1. Window shopping consumes 75% of my time. I spend inordinate, unhealthy amounts of time in various stores, carrying around armloads of sundresses and floaty tees, trying them on and then leaving without purchasing anything. I’m able to indulge my materialism without actually following through. Sometimes I let myself slip, but only if it’s on sale and exceptionally cute.
2. It takes me a long time to leave the house. I’ll take a shower and then sit on the couch in my towel for an hour, half-heartedly applying for jobs and talking to my employed friends on IM. Then I’ll put on underwear. Selecting an outfit to wear when you’re going to be out of the house for a maximum of 2 hours is enormously time-consuming. There are so many options! So many clean shirts, waiting to be worn. I blow dry my hair every day like I’m going on a date. Sometimes I wear makeup for NO REASON. You never know.
3. The library is a place of wonder, joy and pure excitement. Hours. I lose hours in the San Francisco public library. Discovering the DVD section caused me to come home with a variety of awkward and hilarious documentary selections including one about the musical theatre camp in upstate New York and a docuumentary called Shvitz, about the last remaining bathhouse in Coney Island. Broadening my horizons, kids.
4. I avoid doing things I actually need to do. These include visiting the unemployment office, grocery shopping and calling my student loan company to put my loans into forbearance.
5. I walk a lot more. I’m in no rush! Where am I going? Nowhere! Walk downtown! Walk to the bus! Walk up that pesky hill you usually don’t walk up ever, while smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone! Take your time. It’s a nice day out and you have no obligations to anyone.
6. I do a lot of lunch. I am an excellent lunch date. I will gladly meet you near your place of employment, eat a sandwich and talk shop with you. It makes me feel like a part of the workforce and I can offer advice. I’m an excellent yes-man, except when I’m being a cock. Usually I’m not a cock. Tell me your troubles. I like feeling like a person.

I’ll get a job soon.

new leaf again!

I would direct all further attention to trashyornot.blogspot.com. That is where my musings and the musings of my friends re: life, things that are trashy and things that are not trashy are. Maybe every now and then I will update this thing. In fact, here is a new list to go with the list that I made previously, just now.

1. I am unemployed!
2. I am unemployed!
3. Being unemployed is kinda great.

new leaf bitches.

Well.
Times have changed. I am going to do this a little more than just sporadically, if not only to please my meager audience but because might as well.

Here is a comprehensive list detailing things about me that have changed and that are good.

1. I am no longer in love with Dave.
2. I am a traffic manager at a marketing agency.
3. I live in an adorable apartment near the Full House houses with Mary Clair.
4. I will be 25 soon.
5. I don’t mind and even like San Francisco.
5a. I have lived here for almost two years.
6. I have been camping a bunch and it’s not that bad.
7. I don’t suck at knitting, life or my job.
8. I’m a little calmer these days.
9. See #1. It’s the most important and the impetus for my life’s turnaround.