Carthage

October 30, 2002

Boyz II Men songs and the disco ball

It turns out SF State has a Halloween Dance. Capital letters included.

Come on! I have a chance to go to a school dance! Screw you people. I'm getting a corsage and a pimply date and a spangled handbag and hitting the decorated gym with my whole soul. You can all find yourselves someone else's apartment to ransack.

...

...

Okay, just kidding. I guess. Sigh.

Posted by didofoot at 01:50 PM

Languages incomprehensible to the Kahn

I'm reading Invisible Cities again. I know there's more to it than all the pretty words, but the language is so dazzling that I get lost trying to find the unifying elements. "There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us in the evening, with the odor of the elephants after the rain..." That's on the first page. Do you know how hard it is to turn a page like that?

The last time I read this I was in a house covered in blackberries with rats in the roof. Now my rooms smell like paint. The windows let in the cold air and the noise of the sobbing drunk woman trapped in the alley who can't make her fingers work the door.

In between blackberries and paint there was a fallow period when the only words I read were in crosswords. I couldn't see language as anything but puzzling. This was, fittingly, in the house filled with roaches scuttling behind my chair and over my sheets. I walked around with a blank walled brain and bugs hiding in my corners.

Now I'm back to Calvino, thank God, and a fever-hectic neighborhood, and the noise of my neighbors' sex lives, and the odor of the elephants.

Posted by didofoot at 10:09 AM

October 28, 2002

Goodbye Sicilian, hello Lad.

I guess it was inevitable, being that I work near his house, I'm friends with his friends, I take bart near his work, I hang out at his hotspots...

I ran into the Sicilian today.

To be honest, it was so anti-climactic that the sentence hardly deserves its own paragraph. We walked, we talked, I made fun of him. He didn't make fun of me, and that was really the only thing that might be called a reference to the whole issue of our relationship/breakup - not mocking me, because I am the Wronged Party.

I have such a nice life. I'm doing stuff all the time, instead of waiting for him to get home. It felt wrong to have him in it now, in my neighborhood, or sitting across the table from me; like if a Saturday morning cartoon bought you a cup of coffee. We even talked about our friend in common, Frank, who I went out with for a while post-breakup.

Where is the pain? Where is the shouting? Where is the china plate flung at his unsuspecting head? I didn't even feel my teeth get kicked in, except for that first unpleasant jolt. And now it's over, and now I'll stop talking about it, I promise. Upon cautious examination, I have determined that none of my teeth are broken, and my smile is exactly the same.

Posted by didofoot at 07:54 PM

Please help me!

What I do have: a Halloween party in three days.
What I don't have: a costume.

Help! I have a devil wig, sort of, so I could use that I guess...but what else does the devil wear? Preferably something not big and stifling so that I can undergo my usual drink-induced full body blush without misery and pain. Also, I'd rather not carry a prop if I can help it.

I need a costume, like a hole in the head, except that would be lame. Best idea gets a prize.

Posted by didofoot at 01:53 PM | Comments (23)

October 27, 2002

Stoltz makes my life smell like pee.

First of all, I finally swallowed my convictions and rented The House of Mirth. Gillian Anderson, who up until now I'd only seen substituting growling for acting, was actually very good as Lily, who was one of my favorite characters in literature for a long time. Any flaws in her performance I am inclined to blame on bad direction.

Eric Stoltz, on the other hand, had me screaming at the television. Seldon was definitely one of my favorite men in literature, and Stoltz plays him like an old woman in a nursing home. Periodically he glances at Anderson with a searching gaze like he's trying to remember what she's doing there, but the rest of the time he's either querulously demanding that she surrender his spectacles or else nodding and smiling to himself in some private reverie that has nothing to do with the scene or his audience. He fucked up the film and I hate him now.

:Knock knock nerd.

Knock knock hippie:

So I went to this peace march on Saturday. (I think I mentioned it, shrilly, eight or twelve hundred times to y'all?) It was immensely amazingly huge; I've never seen so many people gathered with a single purpose except at Disneyland. But about half an hour into it, my mom looked around and said "You know, almost all of these people are white."

True story, my dad and I agreed. SF is a pretty diverse city, but this march was so white it was almost shiny. It was like being in a Cameron Crowe film. (Side note: watch the few scenes of New York streets in Vanilla Sky and tell me how many non-whites you see. Or, for that matter, how many black musicians you see in Almost Famous.)

I have to write a paper about the march for Government, and I'd like to include the weirdness with a theory about it. So if anyone has a theory, for god's sake hand it over.

Posted by didofoot at 10:11 AM | Comments (26)

October 25, 2002

In which she is maudlin

Every so often I see someone who has one of the Sicilian's features, like the beard or the crazy hair or the eyes, and it kicks my teeth in with a sound like air being sucked out of a plane.

I am so very happy to be through it. All I can remember is the wicked winter cold and the feeling of being in his life on sufferance. I have a slew of saved emails from Allen saying "Doll, I hate to see you waiting around all the time...I hate to see you stuck up in your house like a tower..."

The last month, when I was living in his room, there was a day I spent lying in bed. I couldn't move; no energy. He hung around reading and playing on his laptop and watching movies and all the stuff he usually did, and I just laid there watching him or the ceiling, not thinking about anything. At 4:00 he went to work and I hugged him from the bed and stayed there. Finally, about four hours later, I got up and went outside. I walked around campus for a while with no sense of where I was going, and finally ran out of steam and just stood at a fork in the path for a good ten minutes with a head completely devoid of thought. Sat down for another fifteen minutes, I think. People would come by and stare and I didn't really register much. Finally I climbed a tree just to be doing something. Stayed up there for a long time, in the cold with no shoes on. When my nose was too clogged to breathe, I went home.

I moved out a few days later, we broke up, things got better. I don't know why I'm even thinking about it, except that it's starting to get cold again and I walk by that tree most days after work and my office is still two blocks from his house.

Posted by didofoot at 04:21 PM | Comments (7)

December coming home

My sweet peacock Allen sent us some photos
of mostly Guatemala. Lord I miss that boy. Which is a little odd, considering we have pretty much been email friends most of the time I've known him, but he did smell awfully nice.

Posted by didofoot at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

1,2,3,4, We don't want your - hey, the Gap's having a sale!

Yesterday in my Government class, the prof handed back our papers and gave us some virtual head-patting for a while, which was satisfying. Then she wrote the following in HUGE LETTERS ON THE BOARD:

ITS
IT'S

She made us identify which was the possessive and which the contraction. "Learn it, know it," she said. "It'll be on the final. I marked down for this, people; some of you lost a whole letter grade because of 'its' and 'form' or 'from' and other basic mistakes. I blame California public schools, but you have to fix it."

YAY!

In contrast, my English teacher, writing on the board, spelled 'caricature' with an 'h.' "No 'H,'" said English John. We had previously discussed this as being our biggest problem with the class: teacher can't spell. This prompted a five minute discussion where most of the class, including the teacher, insisted the word was right, and English John quietly negated them while I sat in my corner and chortled, periodically agreeing with him when there was the least chance of anyone hearing me. Finally someone looked it up and he was vindicated.

But mostly State is a very good school.

Here's what is fun: Walking around downtown for two hours tomorrow between 11 and 1. Come for the protest, stay for the chain-store shopping! Come on, sheepies. Everyone and my mother are doing it.

Posted by didofoot at 08:47 AM | Comments (6)

October 23, 2002

ENGLISH JOHN VS. WHITE DAN IN THE WRESTLING MATCH OF THE CENTURY

So I met another Us, who may or may not have a website for Us to inundate. He's in my English class; his name is John; I call him English John, but not to his English face. Now he has a nickname; already, his Us-ness is clear.

English John reads books. So far, he has only admitted to reading the Bible, but I know he has a secret sci-fi soul and he certainly has the vocabulary of a literature addict. Also, he has a friend (another Us, quite possibly) who makes movies about zombies, for fun. English John got to play an English zombie in the last one, but not English.

Hobbies include: regular head shaving, Bible reading, zombie acting, being English.

I'm planning on introducing him to the rest of you as soon as I can trick him into it. Let's have a big Us welcome for English John and his fabulous dancing spiders. Except for the spiders.

Posted by didofoot at 04:20 PM | Comments (21)

And we kept minor movie stars in the yard, as pets...

I watched the full audio commentary on "Can't Hardly Wait," which I guess is the obligatory activity for new DVD owners. It is a process totally without enjoyment, even when Seth Green does a fake English accent which he refuses to drop until all the other people commenting gang up and yell at him to quit.

What I did like about it: the other commentors clearly had a thing for Jennifer Love Hewitt and just as clearly did not find Seth Green at all amusing. At one point during a Love scene, one of them said "And of course Love was filming Party of Five at the same time she was filming this. I think she actually pulled a few 24 hour days. But she looks just sensational, she's so amazing."

Seth said, "Hey, I was filming Buffy while I was doing this."

Long pause. "Shut up, Seth."

Saturday my parents are taking me to my first anti-war protest. (Unless you count the time in middle school when, seeing that the high school next door had gotten news vans to cover their anti-war rally, about sixty of us sixth graders decided to stand around on the playground after the final lunch bell had rung, yelling slogans our parents had taught us and hoping Wolf Blitzer would run over with a camera. But I don't count that, myself.)

I always tell people I had a standard-issue California childhood. The 1989 earthquake was on my 10th birthday; my parents were friends with drug dealers (really just one, who dealt what my mom refers to as "the soft drugs" in order to be a stay-at-home mom); and my dad used to tell me that when I was ready to try pot I should let him know and we could all do it together in the living room. We had a swimming pool and fruit trees and a semi-famous cousin. We talked about sex. We had a Mr. Natural postcard and a quote from Gandhi on the bulletin board. And now we're protesting together. Good times.

Nothing beats the small pieces I've heard about Pants's
childhood, however. He hasn't blogged about his all-health all-the-time diet but maybe he should, hint ahem hint.

Posted by didofoot at 10:59 AM | Comments (20)

October 21, 2002

Thanks, y'all.

Yesterday, I joined Netflix.

Now my laser eye project is complete. (If by "laser eye project" you mean "life." And who doesn't?)

Posted by didofoot at 12:00 PM | Comments (5)

That's why the lady is a...

Yesterday my mom and grandfather came by to drop off some stuff at my apartment and we made my grandfather wait with the illegally-parked car while we hauled things back and forth. When we finished, we came out to find him ogling a young blond Marilyn-type in a tight red dress and spike heels stalking down the street. "Holy criminy," he said, because he talks like that, "would you take a look at her."

"Him, Dad," my mom said.

"What?" he said, entirely engrossed by the nine-foot legs.

"That's not a woman," she said.

"Well what is it, then, a rhinoceros?" he said, because he still talks like that.

"It's a man, Dad," she said patiently.

"No," he said. "Her? In the red?"

"Yes, Dad. Why would a woman be dressed like that on a Sunday afternoon just to walk down the street?" Astonishingly, the counter argument to this (why would a man be dressed like that) did not seem to occur to him.

There was a moment of silence,
And then a lot more silence.

"What?" he said finally. And then, "Slow down when you pass her. I'd like to see her from the front."

I would have thought he'd be more disturbed, given that he is an 80 year old man who is in many ways prejudiced like other people are breathing. But I guess when you're 80, a fine ass is a fine ass no matter what it comes equipped with.

Posted by didofoot at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2002

Kicking is never the answer.

"Are you going to go on your ride tomorrow?" I asked The Lad at dinner last night, because I am The Stupid. The Lad had been planning to drive his motobike 1,000 miles in a day to get an obscure certification which would profit him nothing in the real world, much like a Bachelor's Degree.

"No," said The Lad regretfully. "I haven't had a chance to fix my bike yet."

"What's wrong with your bike?" asked my mom, who might also be called The Sharp Ears but won't be.

"Oh, I laid it down last weekend," said The Lad blithely, as if he didn't know this would land me in a mess o'trouble. I began gently kicking his ankle with all of my strength under the table. (For those of you who just like normal 4-wheeled vehicles, 'laying down' a bike means anything from a minor fall to a near-death experience.)

"What," said my mother, in a tone which to me clearly meant "You have ten seconds to pretend you're joking before I forbid you to ever see my daughter again," but to The Lad apparently meant "How interesting, please tell me more."

"Yeah," he said, "I was going about ten miles an hour on the freeway..." While he told his story, under the table my foot was frantically WHAM-WHAM-WHAMming his anklebone. My mom finally looked at me and said "Kicking isn't going to help."

When he finished his story, she turned to me and said "You understand that you can never go on his bike, ever again, ever, whatsoever, ever, never. Right?"

"I understand," I said solemnly. Then The Lad decided this was a great moment to begin telling a story about this time he and his wonderbike hit the side of a VW Bug...

Posted by didofoot at 03:09 PM | Comments (3)

October 16, 2002

Danny for my sins

When Danny - monastic Danny, not Brian Austin Green Danny - left for the monastery I said "You have to come back, though, to marry The Lad and I if we ever get married. That's how I always imagined it."

"Okay," he said. After a pause, "You'll never get married though, will you."
Me, "Well, I retain the right to your services in the event."

I wrote him a letter - him Danny not him The Lad - and sent it off, hopefully with enough stamps to make it to Greece. I wrote about sushi night and the musical and Katie's causes and school and those abortion-picture people. I figured he doesn't get enough of that kind of stuff, living with the monks.

Even though he turned out not to be dying for our sins (I know Michele was disappointed not to have her sins erased), I still feel like I have an ace in the hole. Somewhere in Greece, Danny is being spiritual so that I can whore around and lie to people and steal pens from work and occasionally hide a body in the woods. And also be slothful and gluttonous and covet my neighbor's wife (who, in the Castro, is generally a very good looking man). I bet this is not how Danny intended that to work, but I find I sin a lot more knowing someone is working to balance it. What the hell, he's there anyway. Why have a full tank of gas and not drive anywhere?

And if he is anything, he is a full tank of gas.

Posted by didofoot at 09:24 AM | Comments (7)

October 15, 2002

Blogging for a better tomorrow

Today while leaving Cala Foods I got asked for change by a ubiquitous street person. I declined in my usual manner, by shyly shaking my head while walking and half-smiling, in an attempt to communicate through mime my disinclination to part with my cash even though later my suburban white guilt would give me no rest. A few steps away I glanced back over my shoulder at the guy. Sure enough, he was Fred Abramson, this kid I grew up with whose parents are best friends with my parents. The last time I saw Fred he was all cologne and cynical wisdom and big pretty eyes. Oh, and rich. Why would Fred need my spare change, I wondered?

Noticing that I had been standing directly in front of him and staring at him, Fred stood up and raised his eyebrows. "Take off your hat," I said, wanting to see his face better and, as always, incredibly rude. (Somewhere in my teens I decided that being rude to everyone without prejudice was just as valid as being polite to everyone. Unfortunately, this belief sort of stuck. Sorry about that.) He took off his hat.

"My hair's all messed up," he said, looking self-conscious and rubbing his hair. I found this incredibly cute. Here he is begging for change and he's worried about whether I'll like his hair.

It occurs to me that this story would be better if the kid really had been Fred. But of course he wasn't; Fred's all studious and lives in the Haight and is, more to the point, not homeless. It was just an eerie resemblance. So where was I going with this? I think it was just homework avoidance.

Well, back to my essay.

Posted by didofoot at 05:14 PM | Comments (9)

October 14, 2002

In which she contemplates serial insomnia

At the Exploratorium, there's an exhibit featuring small golden fish which led me to a fascinating discovery. I found that just by pressing a button and using my incredible mind powers, I was able to make the fish start and stop swimming according to my whims. The conclusion is so obvious (though it was not explicitly stated on the experiment's accompanying plaque): I am the god of fish.

So that happened.

Last night my schizophrenic homeless friend spent an hour (between 3 and 4 in the morning) screaming her mantra outside my apartment ("HolyshitHolyshitHolyshit...") When I say "my friend," what I mean is "the disembodied voice who comes along every few days to wake me up and creep the shit out of me."

I know my only real option to stop the voice is to call the cops. But I'm reluctant to have someone thrown in the clink just because I can't sleep. Well, I guess the other option is to go out there with some soup and a smile but Francisly she scares me.

I did try to use my mind powers on her, but it turns out she is not a fish.

You know what, if I ever have the opportunity to design a fantasy city, I will totally include a hands-on science museum exactly like the Exploratorium. Because that is seriously solid.

Posted by didofoot at 08:50 AM | Comments (8)

October 11, 2002

Picture me making a bucktoothed rodent face. Awww.

It turns out that there are people who breed guinea pigs for show.

Like "Best in Show"? Everybody's favorite mockumentary involving dogs? Except with guinea pigs.

Now, I like the little rodents as well as anyone. And when I get my two (who will be male and female and named, respectively, Jupiter and Waffle), I will show them to anyone who cares to look. But I wouldn't put them IN a show.

Because I believe a guinea pig's life should be about much, much more than a shallow modelling career.

Cue Ben Stiller. As a guinea pig.

Yeeeaugh!

Posted by didofoot at 01:59 PM | Comments (7)

October 10, 2002

In New York, you can get Triscuits delivered.

Alittle bit drunk. A little bit fdurnk. A little biut drinuk.

So here's some birds of the Bay Area:

Marbled Godwit
Least Tern
Black-crowned Night Heron
Cinnamon Teal
Bufflehead Duck

You will like that, I thinkso.

My friends, today in the quad at school were a couple of guys with waist-high reproductions of pictures of aborted fetuses. I cried and cried. Why would you do that? Can you think my mind will be changed? What a fuck, I said, but could not think how to give them the verbal equivalent of a waist-high reproduction of a picture of an aborted fetus. I stood and stared for the longest time. It looked like a sad bloody muppet.

Well I will have some more wine. What with the war, and the fetuses, I am knocked up as they say in Jane Austen when they mean tired tired tired. I know it is passe to care about the war and stuff but I kind of do. I keep thinking of the nice cafes and such on Castro Street that will be rubbleized if bombing occurs.

Yesterday the police shot a homeless man in Baghdad Cafe near my house, to death. He was coming at them with knives garnered from the kitchen is what I heard but I just don't know what to think anymore. I wonder if he was black, if he was dirty, if they were white and clean. I will have some more wine. Sorry for this, sorry sorry for this. I think there's a nationwide protest being organized in multiple cities on the 26th if anyone is interested. I will have an eye to the fliers.

Posted by didofoot at 10:42 PM | Comments (14)

October 09, 2002

Represent, represent-sent.

Sushi night rocked the house. Every time I get to hang out with you guys I am so happy.

Awww. Enough gooeyness. Get a chatroom.

So...does anyone know what the draft age is set at now? (...She asks casually. Pay no attention to the war behind the curtain.) Do you think we need to start setting up some Canadian pipelines for you gentleman or what?

Posted by didofoot at 04:45 PM | Comments (7)

October 07, 2002

Kate Hepburn on a motorbike; let my Hepburn go.

I finally got to ride on The Lad's motorbike this weekend. His spare helmet is too big for me so it tends to wobble around on my head a lot; I probably look like a Parkinson's sufferer from the outside.

On the first ride we took he reminded me to lean with the driver into the turns, which I'd already known from having ridden around on the back of my dad's bike when I was nine or so. What I forgot was that at nine I was (a little) smaller than I am now, a lesson which was quickly brought home the first time I leaned my whole weight into a turn, putting my body parallel to the ground and nearly capsizing the bike. Ah, physics, you tempermental whore.

Six people searching google for "tempermental whores" will come here today and be wretchedly disappointed.

I also find I have a tendency to bunch my whole body up against his back like a small, frightened hamster girl. After a few rides, he suggested that maybe I could lean back a bit as the weight on his wrists was starting to induce carpal tunnel. "You can hold on anywhere," he reminded me. "Your death grip could be, for example, on my shoulders, rather than my air supply." Reading between the lines, one can infer that I might as well be holding onto an imaginary bar in the air, for all the good it will do me when we have to stop suddenly and I am flung headf--Mom, do you still read this? Because that bike is totally, totally safe and I'm not going to ride on it anymore anyway.

Moving right along...tonight is sushi night, hosted of course by Sushi. It sounds very adult but I understand it's more of a Girls Gone Wild night of covering each other in sticky rice.

Oh man, I apologize also to everyone searching Google for that phrase.

Posted by didofoot at 10:17 AM | Comments (19)

October 04, 2002

Quote of the (yester)Day

My yoga teacher: "There's all kinds of good reasons to be upside down."
Me: "Really."
Him: "All kinds."

Now one of you will probably make a really serious comment about how there are very good reasons for being upside down you know...

Posted by didofoot at 04:02 PM | Comments (2)

Dumb and Dumber

Yesterday we had a guest speaker in my government class, this immigration lawyer, Bob Jobe At one point he referenced a case related to Ellis Island. From the back of the class, That Annoying Girl called out "What's Ellis Island, again?" And her neighbor, in a tone of horrified disbelief, said "Really?" Right then I was ready to marry the neighbor.

Yesterday in yoga we did shoulder stands, wherein you lie on your back with most of your body straight up in the air and your hands and elbows supporting your lower back. "I can do shoulder stands now," I told Tracy, ebullient, and she laughed so hard her head almost exploded.

"Now?" she said. "You mean you couldn't..." (when you were an infant) "before this?"

Urm. My yoga is special, for special people. Special people like me.

What's a shoulder stand again?
Really?

Posted by didofoot at 03:42 PM | Comments (10)