“Okay, let’s get started, everyone.” Finding her place, noting the surprised murmurs, afraid to look up at the class to see who had stayed.

She looked up.  Most had.  Good.

See that thing up there?  That purple date?  That’s when I’m scheduled to have Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS*) with Dr. Pierre Brassard and Dr. Maud Bélanger in Montreal…that’s in Canadia, you guys, our frozen, but warm-hearted neighbor to the north!  I just made the appointment a few days ago after weeks and weeks of scurrying around like a secretive, paperwork-collecting little mouse.

I started scurrying in mid-April after discovering that I could borrow most of the money from my retirement account.  The place I work has a program where you can loan yourself the money and then pay yourself back over time at a low interest rate (it’s just over 2.5% right now).  When I started looking into it, I saw that I could take out a loan for around $15,000, which is most of the cost of surgery these days.

Finding out I could get the money was major big thing.  Like, I had always planned on having surgery at some point in the murky, distant future, but the cost made it seem like it was effectively out of reach, especially while I’m still in graduate school and paying off a car loan.  Which was unfortunate because after one boyfriend, I decided I’d had quite enough of pre-op intimacy, thank-you very much.  And I love intimacy!  I had resigned myself to an unhappy/bitchy chastity, so, believe me when I say I was really excited about the money thing.

I emailed the two most well-known surgeons in North America (Dr. Marci Bowers and Dr. Pierre Brassard) and asked about their fees and wahtnot.  Dr. Bowers’ rate is $22,500 and Dr. Brassard charges $18,040 (Canadian).  Honestly, I chose Dr. Brassard for his lower price, but he has an excellent reputation as a caring and experienced surgeon.  There are more affordable options in Thailand and in the United States, but the choice, for me, was always (and only) between those two.

Along with the price quote, Dr. Brassard’s office sent a welcome packet which contained his list of requirements for scheduling a surgery date.  Basically, I had to submit a letter of recommendation from two different therapists and one from my endocrinologist (who’s also my GP and primary care physician) and a health history questionnaire.  I already had one therapist and we had discussed her crafting a surgery letter for me from the start of our sessions together.  While she worked on my letter, she referred me to another therapist for the second letter.

Seeing the second therapist sucked.  A lot.  It had been a long time since I’d discussed anything major with my primary therapist (and I rarely see her), but I had to resurrect everything for the new therapist over one, 90-minute session.  I’m generally happy with where I’m at in my life right now, but that session made it seem like things were mucho shitty-o up until a few years ago.  And they were!  But I guess my powers of repression and survivor’s optimism are terrible and mighty; it’s always been easier for me to look forward.  I wasn’t raped or molested or raised in an oppressive religious environment, but I’ve had very little real stability in my life (combined with some epically bad parenting) and it’s always been easier for me to burn bridges and reinvent myself…for lots of reasons.

With that ordeal out of the way, I collected my GP’s letter and emailed the whole shebang up to faraway Montreal on June 30th.  And then I waited. Ugh. I fucking hate waiting, you guys!  I mean, I guess most people do, but I’m pretty sure I hate it the most…or I’m at least in the top ten.  Probably.

Moving on…I received my first date offer two weeks later.  November 20th, 2011.  Holy crap, I thought, that’s in 4 months!  (I was expecting something in the next 12-18 months). And then I thought some more.  That’s in the middle of Thanksgiving week, about three weeks away from the end of my school semester and two months away from the end of  this year-long major work leadership thing I’ve been on (oh yeah, I guess we haven’t talked about that). I’ll need to take about six weeks off of work, and twelve of those days will be spent in Montreal.  I rejected that date the next day; there wasn’t any way to make it fit.  Also, my sister said she wanted to be there with me (aww!), so I tried to think of a date that worked for both of us.  As it turns out, her school has the weirdest schedule, and there was literally only one acceptable week between now and December 2012, and they’re “on standby” that week, whatever that means.  So I picked the next best week: May 9th, 2012.

I think it’s a good date.  I’ll be out of school for the summer and I should be able to work from home for the last of the six weeks (give or take) I plan on taking off.  My sister won’t be there with me the entire time, but that’s ok; I’m hoping my mother will be there for the rest.

It seems like a long way off, but it’s not even a year and I think it will go by fast.  There’s still a lot to do, but I think I’ll have time to get my passport, lose weight/exercise more, and finish all the 1,001 other things I have to do without feeling harried.

Now that that’s all done, I’m feeling all of the feelings, you guys.  Like,  I’m happy that I can close out that last part of transition, but I’m also worried about almost everything.  Surgery is dangerous and it may not “fix” anything.  Recovery will take a long time and there’s still so much left to do.  Oh, and let’s not forget about the money!  THE MONEY!  I’m guessing those are the reasons that I’m feeling like there’s a green cloud of creeping dread that’s slowly choking the life out of me right now.  I’m sure it will pass, but so far, not cool, brain.  Do you think all that’s a good enough reason to get a Valium prescription until then?  How awesome would that be?  THE ANSWER IS SO AWESOME!

Anyway, consider yourself updated, old blog.  I’ll post more here or on tumblr when something else exciting happens.  Until then, please distract me or buy me some ice cream or something, ok?

*a.k.a. Genital Reconstruction Surgery, Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), gender confirmation surgery, sex change, vaginoplasty, etc.

Well, it’s been a while since we did an episode of The annahell Share Times Family Feelings Friendship Hour so put on your reading pants and buckle up!

But first, is this an amazing picture or what?  I don’t know wtf it is but I found it when I was searching for screen caps from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!.  Is that a Scorpio symbol on her beanie hat thing?  Oddly appropriate.  I know it isn’t Halloween-y, but I’M THE BOSS HERE AND WHAT I SAY GOES.  Don’t fret though, it’ll be non-menstrual themed ghouls and goblins from now on, promise.

So yeah, feelings…I’m kind of frustrated, you guys.  I’ve mentioned that it’s been a busy few weeks what with school and what’s been going down at work and all.

School is fine, I guess.  I’ve got my homework schedule down and I haven’t gotten lower than a 98/100 on anything, but I kind of hate this class.  I’m always late and nobody talks to me and lately, I don’t even look at the professor when he’s talking anymore.  I just roll my eyes A LOT and mumble curses (witch curses!) under my breath.

Like, the guys are friendly, when cornered, but standoffish/shy enough that introverted shut-ins seem more sociable.   And I’m never in a good mood for that class (what with the boob-staring or the lateness-inducing early morning-ness of the class), so doing an hour of Samantha Small Talk just to have an awkward conversation with a stinky nerd boy is nigh inconceivable. NIGH INCONCEIVABLE!

Also, if I can nrrd grrl out for a second, the way the teacher just shrugs off the math all the time is really starting to bother me…like in a uh-oh, maybe I chose the wrong program kind of way. Like, if this was an electrical engineering course, I would be holding on for dear life, but at least they would do proofs and not refer to the math as “hard” or “scary.”  It’s just insulting, you guys.

Whatever, it’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.  I think it might help me feel better if I could get to class on time or if I asked the tall-white-guy clique if they want to study after work (the Indian kids just keep to themselves).

And can we talk about this leadership program thing at work?  So I applied to this junior leadership thing at work and it’s been, shall we say, a difficult process.  There were all these specific requirements for the application process…

-make a weird resume with your past company’s mailing address and a salary history

-use this one website that’s broken in strange ways for half of the 30-day application period and then when you complain about it to the program contact you get thrown into this it’s not my fault back-and-forth between the contact and her supervisor and the contractor that runs the web site.

-have your supervisor fill out an evaluation form on how good you are at “political savvy” and “leveraging diversity”

-fill out these 16 essay questions about your leadership history but we’re only going to give you 250 characters for each one so, basically, just sum it all up in one long, godamn sentence.

-oh yeah, and the essay questions will contradict themselves from one sentence to the next and have a lot of typos and crap, NBD.

-and then fax in everything with this kooky cover sheet system so that we’re guaranteed to lose most of it.

-and don’t fuck it up because your supervisor who you really like and seems to, for some reason, always have your back and is always pulling for you asked you to apply to this program and you can’t screw this up because we’re all counting on you, OK?  OK????

-oh and even though you spent all that time making sure your application was to-the-letter-perfect and submitted well before the deadline, we’re going to lose your documents (see above) anyway, so don’t freak out when you check the website and it says “Ineligible – Application Incomplete,” just keep faxing that shit over and over and over again until you retire or get fired.  Good luck!

So yeah, good times.  Oh, and I also I had a scary-real dream about how my ex forgave me and we got back together and then killed these three people and I’ve been seriously thinking about asking the proprietress of the local BDSM dungeon place how one might, possibly maybe go about training to become a part time professional dominatrix for reasons that I do not, at all, feel comfortable discussing at the present time or in this forum.  Also, crushing loneliness/sister abandonment issues.

If that is not a gratuitous picture of myself on this Wednesday, then I don’t know what is.

Your move, internet.

I just found this list in my gmail drafts box.  I can’t remember what it was for or if I even wrote it (I think I did, but I’m not one to be trusted).  I think it was part of my short-lived attempt to find a better (and apparently secret) nickname than Anna Banana.  Regardless, it made me lol just now, so share time.

Janet Reno
The Other Obama
Annabree the Shiv-ner
Magic Annie Warbucks
Li’l Bow Wow
Elizabespectacled
Molly Mathlete
Captain Blackbush
The Scourge of the Plains
Iron Anna
Betty Beef
Little Shirley Pimple
Queen Roast Beefa
Hillary Cunton
Cheezus
Queen Kong
The Queen of Donkey Kong
Princess Peach, Princess of Mario World
Smacky Spice

Oh damn! As soon as I saw this, I knew that this was the golden comedy fleece from which the fabled Sweaters of Hilarity are knitted.

Is this inspiration enough for a joke off? THE ANSWER IS YES!

If you want to play along at home, write a joke and post it or submit it to me.  I’ll reblog the best!

•I’ll take ‘Worst Ways to Find Out Your Parents Don’t Love Each Other Anymore’ for $600, Alex.

•Divorce Magazine has a strict no suicide/binge drinking/custody kidnapping editorial policy because those kind of stories just bring you down, man.

•Rejected Divorce Magazine article submissions:

So, your hubby’s making time with the Cootie Queen?

Spousal surveillance: a beginners guide.

Are you a stalker?  Take our quiz and find out!

Divorce: Still shitty after all these years.

•Divorce Magazine can go fuck itself along with Dick Cheney.

•Music Legend Dan Hill Talks Relationships…THAT END IN DIVORCE.

•Ahh, memories…of my parents getting divorced. Also, therapy.  Lots of therapy.

Short Attention Span Sci-Fi Inspired by Found tumblr Art

“Where?  I don’t see it, Chief” confessed the navigator.  “Is it like a satellite or something?  There’s a satellite over there.”

Chief Science Officer Bertrand clasped his left hand over the befuddled navigator’s mouth and forced his head towards the creature with his right.

“No, you cretin, over there,” Bertrand hissed.  “Behold!  Megasiderus cuniculus, consumer of worlds. If I’m not mistaken, that’s Miss Flopsy, the cherry-colored mega bun of Sacron Prime.  And she’s making a meal out of the fifth moon of Jaal!”

“Mmur mmph mffng flrgnumph?”

Chief Bertrand stroked the top of the navigator’s head, as a child might stroke a beloved pet or a kindly, old sock, “Indeed, my dear Sylvio, she does appear to be very far from home.  But why?”

My chance to hop on the annoying Jesus bandwagon…

mary: OK, now really look this time. Do you see anything in my eye?

jesus: Hey Mary?

mary: Do you see anything?

jesus: Hey Mary?

mary: What?

jesus: Knock, knock

mary: Seriously? My eye really hurts, Jesus! Could you just do what I ask for once?

jesus: No, it’s cool, you’ll like this one. Knock knock.

mary: Ugh. Who is it?

jesus: *laughing* Jesus. It’s Jesus.

mary: Jesus who?

jesus: Jesus Christ would you shut the damn door already! HAHAHAHAHA.

mary: You’re an asshole.

Counting from left to right, top to bottom…

1. people

2. people

3. people

4. people

5. people, but very slowly

6. people, 3, 4, and 9

7. really slow people, other cows

8. man, all of the above

9. chili rellenos…also, people

Wow, you guys, I don’t know what to say; it’s like I don’t even live here anymore. I have moved on, sort of, but not in a oh fine you can just take your stupid blog and go screw yourself kind of way. It’s more like a hiatus or a sabbatical or whatever. I’d been spending a lot of time away from here on tumblr anyway, but I’m on break from there too. I started to develop a sort of tumblr obsession and I felt like the summertime was passing me by. I’m not back from sabbatical or done with my internet vaca, but I did want to post this while I’m recovering from today’s company picnic.

Longtime readers of Blog, Sweet Blog (not that there are any longtime readers) may recall last year’s post about the annual company picnic. We had this year’s picnic today, and it was a lot of fun, but way hot, like usual.  As in the previous year, I sent out another company-wide email inviting people to come play croquet after lunch and I have reproduced it below for your viewing pleasure…

My fellow picnickers,

As usual, we’re going to be partying-down, Croquet style, at today’s company picnic. If you are reading this email, you are cordially invited to join your ITS Picnic friends for a stimulating round of one of America’s “oldest” lawn games…that’s played with wooden balls…and long hammer things…that isn’t polo. As always, Croquet supplies are limited, so hurry over if you’re interested.

Croquet, y'all!

What: A sweet round of Croquet
When: The company picnic, before and after food…possibly during
Where: That one grassy spot, over there by the tree

If some of you are unfamiliar with Croquet or how to spot a game in progress, please enjoy the following visual aids.

Fig 1: "Silly" tennis is not Croquet.

Fig 2: Victorian mining is not Croquet.

Fig: 3 A snapshot from last year's company picnic; Croquet is Croquet.

Hope that helps!
Warmest regards, sincerely,


The ILS(C)S staff
p.s. Not sure how to play? Do you like rules? Click here!

Hilarious, no? Whatever, I like sending them out and playing croquet at the company picnic and no one ever yells at me for it, so whatever. If the price of a sweet round of company picnic croquet is being known as “the weird chick who sends out the funny, unsolicited croquet email invitations”, then so be it, I’ll pay.

So yeah, not back from vaca yet but it won’t be much, much longer. Who knows, I might even post some of the “best of” from mah tumblr in the meantime.

I hope you’re enjoying your summer (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), you guys! And remember, I love you, etc.

Sort of...in a way

Holy cats, you guys!  I’m actually writing a Blog, Sweet Blog post for its own sake and not just reposting mah tumblrs.  Don’t get me wrong, tumblr is my new spiritual home and the place I spend most of my time, but we’ve been through a lot, this blog and I, and I can’t stop loving it just because its not tumblr. Besides, this post is relevant to Blog, Sweet Blog‘s interests, which is why I’m posting it here first.

It’s my anniversaries!

I started this blog (well, posted first anyway) on April 23, 2008, or  2.0767 years ago, give or take. I can’t begin to tell you how important this blog has been to me.  It wasn’t ever about attracting readers or experimenting with practical narcissism (those came later).  I’ve always considered this blog to be a safe place for dumping the crazy, discussing whatever, and letting the air out of my head.  I’ll be getting to this in a minute, but it’s easy for me to forget how turbulent the first six months of HRT were for me.   I had just ended a three year long relationship with, until that point, the person I loved most in the world and I was in the middle of chemically altering my body and mind.  I felt unhinged most of the time and happysadangryhyperdepressedenergeticlazy the rest — but not in a bad way, if that makes sense; it felt right and weird.  Anyway, I don’t think I would have done as well if I hadn’t blogged and exercised.

My little blog, bless her, has changed with me.  I’ve struggled with moving from more of a personal/transition journal to an everything blog featuring my thoughts and creative work.  I’m still not sure of where I want to take it, but I  kind of like that it’s all over the place.

I started HRT on June 6th, 2008.  I had started some other transition processes before then (started seeing a therapist, my doctor), but I think it’s fair to call that date the start of my transition.  So, let’s see, that makes me 1.097 years old, in a way.  I won’t ever be celebrating my “new birthday” (the old one is just fine) but I do keep the date on my calendar.  Like I said above, a lot has happened since then (here are the big ones).  I think the process of transition is never ending, but I feel much closer to the end almost two years later.  There are still more physical changes to endure (bottom surgery, the neverfuckingending weekly electrolysis), but I feel like I might have finally graduated to late puberty, at least emotionally.

The last anniversary occurred 1.0548 years ago when I changed my name and started back to work as the real me, the girl named Anna.  Life has gotten kind of weird since then, but work has always felt like a safe place.  I’ve had better and worse days, but no one has ever made me feel uncomfortable or anything but loved and valued.  I know that my experience, sadly, is not the norm and I can’t fairly attribute the ease of my work transition to any more than luck…ok, maybe a little bit of preparation and moxy helped .

Still, I’ve struggled with my career choice.  I really don’t think I would have become an engineer if I would have transitioned earlier.  I’m not 100% sure I’ll stay an engineer until retirement, but I feel a lot better about it than I did a couple of months ago.  If I won the lottery or totally stopped caring about my current life, I’d move to New York or Paris and trade engineering to become a professional artist/bon vivant/salonnière/cultural maven/woman-about-town.  There aren’t any plans to move in the near future, but I’m working on my writing and art in the meantime, just in case.

So that’s it, you guys, happy anniversary/birthday to me and Blog, Sweet Blog!!!  I hope the following years are way easier/better than the last two.

The deadly marmot.

I’m posting this having just listened to an NPR segment on the dangers of Facebook, personal privacy, and our obsession with online exhibitionism. Here’s a quote…

“We increasingly know things about each other (or think we do) that we should not know, have no right to know, and have a right, actually, not to know,” Noonan writes.

And yet, I don’t think this applies to me because…I’ve been blogging for a while?  …I try not to shove it in people’s faces IRL and I keep it mostly anon online?  …I’m a carefree, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants rebel who thumbs her nose at convention and quaffs from the chalice of rugged individualism and my every thought is like, important and stuff?  I don’t know, you guys! I’m sorry for contributing to the downfall of Western civilization and all, but I’ll just die if I can’t share my animal poop stories.

Speaking of…I went on 12 mile hike through Rocky Mountain National Park with my parents one summer when I was still in high school.  I’d had a “stomach ache” all morning, but decided to go on the hike in the hope that a grueling, high altitude summer hike would restore me to good health.

It didn’t.

I felt progressively more sick with each mile and prayed for a nice bathroom to magically appear just off the trail.

After a couple of hours, we stopped at a glacial lake to rest and sightsee.  The lake was beautiful, a clear pool of ancient ice melt resting in a shallow bowl of boulders and rocks.  By this time, my little problem had worked its way up to a Level 3 Bathroom Emergency.  I had to go and looked around for a private spot.  The best I could manage in a glacial field filled with giant rocks, less giant rocks was squatting behind a boulder with my parents on one side and the lake on the other.

So, I’m squatting there, “doing my thing” when a little (and by “little” I mean as big as the fattest housecat you’ve ever seen) marmot…

walks up to say hello…or murder me…or give me the rabies, not sure.  I had never seen a marmot in real life (let alone 4 feet away) and I was excited…also embarrassed, kind of scared.  Most of all I felt sad that this pathetic display was my new woodland friend’s first impression of me.

I tried to shoo it away but it wasn’t going anywhere.  We watched each other for another awkward few minutes before I finished and broke the silence.

“Well, I’m going to go.  It was nice to meet you.  I’m…um…really sorry, ok?  Ok, so…bye.”

The marmot said nothing. I didn’t look back.

I found my parents, but couldn’t bring myself to mention the meeting.  It was too shameful, too fresh.  I finished the rest of the hike but the look of pitying judgment in the marmot’s eyes followed me home and for years afterward.

I went to a different goth night on Friday with my new favorite gay couple and a college friend who’s visiting from San Francisco.  Goth night with mah gays is usually a lot of fun, but Friday was only so-so.

Friday nights are usually hard for me; I’m tired and so over the long week and I’d much rather go home and eat pizza and watch The McLaughlin Group.  This week, I felt nauseous and bloated and gross and I wasn’t really in the mood for people, let alone club people.  I considered calling it off, but this was my only chance to see my friend before he left town again.  Also, it was rainy and humid and it took me two fucking hours to get ready.  So, I felt harried, yargy, and tired before I even walked in the door.

It got better.  We all walked and talked and drank (a lot) before the end of the night.  I caught up with my friend and made eyes at the cute, twink-y bartender.

I’m kind of an adorable, charming, bumbling drunk but I really need to be looked after.  I tipped the bartender when he closed out my tab.  Ten minutes later, I was interrogating him, asking him why he wouldn’t let me tip him.  He assured me that I had, in fact, already tipped him, generously, but I didn’t believe him.  I thought he was flirting with me by making up some elaborate story about tips and my credit card bill.  I made him charge my credit card a dollar so I could leave him another five.  Thank God I didn’t run into a charming grifter on the way to the bathroom, you guys.

I met a man in there somewhere.  He was standing at the end of the bar near my boys, desperately trying to make eye contact with the bartender.  He was jealous of our special connection and asked for my advice.  I suggested he flash a little skin and make with the sexy winking.

We talked a bit while he waited on his drink.  He was an ok looking guy, older, an inch or so taller than me with longer blonde hair and a slightly receding hairline; a nice guy, but not especially remarkable in any way.

A couple of minutes into our conversation, I thought, He’s lying.  He’s a serial killer and he’s cruising for his next victim.  He wants to take you back to his house so he can drug you and tie you up in the basement and videotape you and torture you and murder you and have sex with your corpse and make a lady suit out of your skin.

I don’t know why I felt that way.  He hadn’t flashed any psycho googly eyes or let anything untoward slip out. I just got a sudden lotion-in-the-basket kind of vibe off him and I felt like I had to get out of there.  I made an excuse about having to say goodbye to my San Francisco friend and I walked with him out to my car.

I hope I’m wrong, it sounds like we go to a lot of the same places and that I might see him again.  I hope it was just the alcohol and my crippling fear of intimacy making me crazy.  Then again, it’s like my momma always says, it’s better to be safe than hacked up into tiny bits in some psycho’s soundproof, easy clean murder room.  So, of course I spent the entire day reading about serial killers.

Have any of you ever felt that way, like you just narrowly escaped getting murdered?

Originally written for mah tumblr, be cool.

Look closely at that picture, my friends.  What is that white stuff?  Is it cocaine?  Powdered sugar?  Unflavored, loose snow cones?  No, mah dear tumblrs, it’s snow.

Yes, snow.

SNOW?

SNOW!!!

What’s today date?  How cold is it right now?  Would a helpful infographic answer some of those questions…

What the effing eff, you guys? Is this the dawn of a new Ice Age?  Is this the face of Springtime from now on?  Is blogging about the weather outside ever interesting?

We’re supposed to be due for a new Ice Age any time in the next few thousand years, right?  Actually, I looked for a pat answer to the question, “When is the next ice age, yo?” and found nothing but a lot of academic argument and speculation.  Thanks a lot, “Science”! Let’s just say we’re due for one “any time now”. Maybe this is The Big One….er, the start of One of the Other Big Ones?

For the record, I’d be happy if it never got above 80 degrees, but this is a bit much.  I don’t have a cute pair of stylish,  but funtictional boots and now I’m supposed to be wrapping myself in furs and cooking up the butchered seal and woolly mammoth meat that the menfolk haul back to the cave?  No thank you!

I’ve made the Ice Age joke a few times before, but really, May 12, snow?  What are you going to do tomorrow, Nature?  Make it rain kittens and then chase us around with pepperoni pizza tornadoes?  Come on!

Originally written for mah tumblr, apologies for the cross-posting and etc..

This is what my cat’s imaginary next door secret boyfriend looks like, crossed eyes and all.

I’ve lived in the same townhouse since 2001 and have had the same, next door neighbors for most of that time.  Their cat, lets call him Tommy, seems to spend most of his day on my deck or curled up in a ball on my welcome mat.  I don’t really mind.  He seems like a pleasant sort and always moves out of the way when asked.  But the fact that he hangs around so much, makes me want to gossip and tell wild stories about him.  And, like any other mother, I wonder about his intentions, with my cat…my painfully single, sweet, soft-spoken, pure-bread, indoor cat.

It’s the crossed eyes that give me pause.  I know, I know, I should really grow up already and stop giggling whenever he looks up at me, but he’s just so dopey looking! Every time I see him, I hear my ex, imitating his slow, dimwitted drawl.

DURRR, hello Miss Lady.  Is Torrie in there? She’s so pretty! Can I go inside to talk to her?  She’s my friend.  Are you her mommy?

His dopey eyes and that imagined voice make me want to shoo him away.

NO!  Bad cat! Go away!  She doesn’t want to see you.  She’s too good for you!  YOU’LL NEVER BE TOGETHER!!!

Which would be a mean thing to say and kind of sad for Tommy, if I thought he could understand any of it.

Unfortunately, I think Torrie’s into him.  She’s never even been outside and I’m sure he represents the excitement and mystery of an outdoor life she’s never lived.  We’ve all been there, right?  The sexy rebel, the badboy/girl; we want what’s bad for us.

I’ve seen how she looks at him.  I’m worried that she wants to run away and make the slow, goofy looking babies with him (or at least make out a lot), but I can’t let that happen.  She can do better.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo, Internet!

I was getting down, tumblr-style in celebration of Mexico’s victory at the Battle of Puebla and had written something worthy of posting on Ye Old Blog, Sweet Blog.  So here it is…it’s about mariachi and my love of Mexican (and Hispanic) culture and I hope you like it!  Saunter over to mah tumblr page for more Cinco de Mayo goodness.

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Tagged: alpine slides, Anna, annahell, blog sweet blog, Casa Bonita, charro, childhood, cinco de mayo, denver, from dusk till dawn, guadalajara, guitarrón, mariachi, mexican culture, mexico, senorita, sombrero, sugar skulls, tumblr ]]> http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/mariachi-gets-me-hotbothered/feed/ 0 annahell (via artnevercomesfromhappiness) http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/forget-about-it-fridays/ http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/forget-about-it-fridays/#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:59:08 +0000 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/?p=1863 ]]> Mood: Blurgh Music: Einstürzende Neubauten-Halber Mensch

Aww, rat farts!  I’ve been so busy being tumblr-ifc all over the place, I forgot to do a Friday post.   How about we trade a poem of mine about Minutemen and Charles Bukowski for your angry, bitter tears?

Don’t worry, we’ll talk again later this weekend.

Your hostess, bearing the fruit of her needles.

Ed. This is a long essay about knitting, you guys, but please try to read it…for me, ok?  Think of it as a Gumpian chocolate box filled with some hot knitting action, a few funny bits, a couple of life lessons, a magickal shout out, and delightful animal photography.  In other words, there’s something in it for everyone!  Enjoy!

……………………..

I finally finished that beret.

I feel…well, not as great as I thought I would.  Yes, do go back and look at the date of that post in the link above.  I started this accursed head covering in January and finished it in April.  To those of you who are unfamiliar with knitting, three months is kind of a long time to work on one hat.

I chose the lace grace beret for my second project because I thought it was cute and it seemed like a challenging, though reasonable way to increase my knitting skills.  How wrong was I?  So very wrong.

I felt qualified to  begin this non-beginner-level beret because I had completed one scarf and a few, small practice swatches for learning different beginner techniques (ribbing, increases, decreases, etc.).  Those tiny projects left me feeling powerful and crafty, as if possessed by the very spirit of Athena (goddess of crafts, y’all) herself.  I took my Athenian confidence  down to the local yarn store (LYS) in search of new yarn for mah new project.

The pattern called for a DK weight yarn, so I bought two skeins (on the shop’s recommendation) of a pretty blue-grey baby alpaca.  It also called for use of a set of five double pointed needles (DPN) or a circular needle in a gauge I didn’t have.  “Huzzah, new skills!” I cried as I left the store with my new yarn and a set of 5 bamboo DPNs.

I couldn’t wait to start!  I checked the pattern and immediately got stuck at the cast- on part, a.k.a “the beginning”…

With crochet hook and waste yarn, chain 65 stitches. With working yarn, and US4 needles, pick up 60 stitches from back of crochet chains. Distribute stitches evenly over dpn’s and join in the round, being careful not to twist.

…which, given my extremely limited experience, might as well have said…

Place the platypus paw in the colander with 15 parts unicorn tears,  three silver bells, and the scrapings from an old woman’s shoe.  Agitate the solution by alternately telling knock-knock jokes, humming the chorus to “Midnight at the Oasis”, and petting the auxiliary kitten for approximately twelvyty-two quartons.

The Rosetta stone for the “modified crochet cast-on” wasn’t included with the pattern and I only knew one cast-on method (long tail).  I spent hours asking the Internet until I found an explanation.  I finally figured out how to do it, but, as the following comments show, many of my fellow beret knitters weren’t as lucky…

Love the look. NO CLUE what you’re talking about with the whole cast on method you use here. I’m giving up and moving on to another pattern because of it.

Hi i’ve just started knitting and this pattern completely boggles me.

Spent 2 hours trying to figure it out and ended up with just a massive knot.

Maybe it was just me, but I could NOT figure out the ’simplified tubular cast on’

So, off to a rough start, but still hopeful.

The next step was to join the ends and start knitting an increase round, then a knit round, then a purl round.  I can’t even tell you how long it took me to get past these first three rounds! I must have started over AT LEAST ten times.  The problem is the knit and purl rounds had an extra step that I didn’t know how to undo.  So, when I made a mistake, I couldn’t unknit them and had to start from the beginning.  The DPNs complicated things as well.  Knitting projects can be a bit, how do you say, unruly for the first few rows and it’s even worse when you’re trying to hold four different needles in one hand and knit for the first time ever with the other needle while not trying to drop stitches or get twisted.

I like to call this period of the project, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.  It was an awful, crushing time.  I daily doubted my love for knitting and often wondered if I was going slowly mad; I would fail at the same task, over and over again, yet expect a different outcome, every time.  And I couldn’t stop for the night until I failed again or made it past those three rounds…just like an obsessed crazy person!

At some point, the stars aligned and I managed to finish those three rounds from Hell.  The next step called for an inch-long band of purl  1/knit 1 ribbing, which I actually knew how to do.  It was loads easier because I knew how to back to a problem in the round.  For that one inch, I felt like a knitter who knew what she was doing.  Knitting was fun and satisfying again and I couldn’t wait to start the large, final part of the beret, the lace pattern.

If the weird crochet cast-on was a difficult puzzle, the lace pattern was learning Mandarin Chinese in a long afternoon.  I screwed up, lots.  I started over from the very beginning, lots, again.   Are you beginning to see a pattern here?  Every new knitting thing was another exercise in doing the same thing over again ten times.  Nothing came easily, everything was a struggle.  The good news about starting over so often is that it took much less time to complete the previous steps; just like I was human being in possession of the capability to learn.

I had one more giant meltdown when I was about 2/3rds of the way through it.  I’m not going to lie; that one was hard, you guys.  I let it sit in a sad heap of failure and silent mockery on the kitchen table for over a month.  Ripping out hours and hours of hard work loses its luster after a while, and I was too tired and beaten to keep fighting.  I had convinced myself that DPNs were the root of evil and the source of all my problems.  I would continue, but not until after rewarding myself with a shiny new set of Addi Clicks.

I started over again from the very beginning for the last time and it all seemed so effortless, like I actually knew what I was doing!  I flew through the pattern at three times the speed and finished late one night, et voila!

Another view, on jack-o-lantern pottery

So, where are all these “life lessons”, you ask?  Mellow out, Betty, I’m getting there.

With a very few exceptions, every part of this project involved learning some new technique.  My mother had bought me a copy of Debbie Stollers’s Stitch & Bitch for my birthday last year and it has been my constant companion.  I read (ok, skimmed) a lot of it while working on those first projects, but there’s so much that didn’t sink in…

-bring the yarn in front before you purl

-make sure it’s in the back before you knit

-use round markers

-round markers go on the needle cord, not the yarn, dummy

-don’t believe them when they say you need two skeins of yarn to knit one beret

-make test swatches…they’re boring, but important

-check your work, count your rows

-television and complicated knitting patterns don’t mix

-drinking and knitting is a bad idea

-you get better results when you pay attention to what you’re doing

-little mistakes shouldn’t keep you up at night

-persistence and hard work pay off

-the people that say knitting is easy are not your friends

-it’s ok to ask for help; challenge builds character

-we only truly know ourselves in the face of adversity

…and on and on.

I finished it two weeks ago, but I wanted to block it and take some decent pictures before posting this.  In case you were wondering, there are a few major mistakes in it, but they’re something only other knitters would notice.  Here the crazy thing about knitting, you guys: I wanted to start work on a new, mistake-free version the very next day.

The mistakes don’t matter though, I’ll love it and cherish it forever…or I’d better keep it forever. I told a friend that this simple hat had become a sort of Horcrux for me.  Like, I had invested so much of myself in its creation, that it felt like a piece of my soul would be lost if something happened to it or it fell into the wrong hands.  Knitting just might be the secret to immortality!

So there it is, knitting (and crafting) can save the world and make you a better, smarter, more attractive and successful person, but you might have to suffer through months of desperate living before you get there.  Mileage varies, but my learn-to-knit experience has seemed closer to and nearly as profound as crossing the Abyss.  I still have so much to learn, but I feel like I can finish any project now…and I’m def pro at making berets.

So, what should I make next?

Continued from here.

I’m prolly way behind on this, but knowyourmeme.com is a magical wonderland of 2/3 of the reasons why I love the Internet.  If I may…

Guy behind chess players: YEAHHHHHHH!

Girl behind him:  ARE YOU GUYS PLAYING CHESSSSSSS?

Guy in the back: QUEEN TO CASTLE 4, CHECKKKKK!

Continued from here.

True story: I’m not sure how to feel about a guy who begins his dating site profile with a quote from Nietzsche.  I’m 30% turned on, 25% already bored, and 45% afraid that he’s going to want to drag me to a White Power rally for our six month anniversary.  Internet dating is hard, you guys.

Well hey there! Just so you know, tumblr has taken over my life and I kind of feel like selling all my possesions and shaving my head in the hopes that it pleases the elders of tumblr.  Until I finish one of those stories, here a recap of the “amazingly funny” stuff I’ve been shooting into deep tumblr space lately.

I think we need to talk about this, I have so many questions. I just noticed this banner ad for another dating/hookup site at the top of my dating/hookup site. I’m going to go with the theory that the person who created this ad knew what they were doing, but ew, you guys. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just show Laying Down Guy’s engorged member? Why is his lover standing up in bed?! Is this the sort of advertising that appeals to queer boys? What would the equivalent queer girl ad look like?

More exciting tumblr recaps to follow.  Stay tuned!

Still wrestling, but closer.

In the meantime, here’s something that I wrote for mah tuumblr today.  It doesn’t even begin to cover the unfathomable, depraved spectacle of my love for Messrs. Moz and Marr, but it’s a nice primer.  Here’s a thought; why don’t they have a The Smiths karaoke here?  I would sing And the hills are alive with celibate cries and You said I was ill, and you were not wrong and Oh, the alcoholic afternoons over and over again until they asked me to leave every week.  I can imagine the people that would show up for that; oh the friends I’d make! Anyway…

FROM TUMBLR: One of the funnier whiteboard jokes (which isn’t saying much) from the engineering computing lab when I was in school. Someone drew a nice dog on the whiteboard and I added the words….because I like to help.

Ugh!  I’m so sorry, you guys.  I’ve been so busy tumblrlogging and wrestling with a bunch of hot, sweaty story ideas, that I’ve been neglecting my oldest and bestest love, Blog, Sweet Blog.  Again, sorry, but allow me to explain.

Oooh, wait!  First, let me explain the “not-dearth” thing.  Sometimes, when I write, I consult a dictionary or thesaurus to double check a word’s meaning or spelling.  I had dropped “dearth” on a friend of mine during a particularly lengthy and productive Skype call this weekend.  The context was something like, “Yeah, there’s too many choices these days; there’s a dearth of options!”  She even made especial note of the word when I said it and , at the time, I thought she was admiring mah mad word skillz.  I thought I’d go back to the well this morning and impress you all with a well-placed dearth or some other, more obnoxious synonym.  Well, color me all kinds of embarrassed; the Wiktionary told me that the synonyms for dearth were scarcity and paucity, not abundance and plenty.  +1 to the forces of evil allied against me! This is a one-woman operation, you guys.  Sometimes, I make mistakes, ok?  Sometimes I’m not a “good speller” or a “person who knows the meanings of words and uses them correctly in a sentence.”  I don’t think you should let a silly thing like that stand in the way of our special love.

So anyway…trapped underneath a 500 pound pile of story ideas right now and I don’t know how to get out from under it. Should I tell you guys about how knitting crushes all but the strongest of craftsters and how this recent project is driving me to the very edge of madness? Should I tell you the story about my Saturday and how I got sort-of kidnapped and fed breakfast by Denver’s most interesting tow truck driver?  Perhaps we should talk about my recent business trip to Las Vegas and its connection to my other trips to Washington DC and Mobile, AL this year? Maybe I should be working on a I’m a nice girl, really, you guys cherry for the top of that dating piece I just did.  Of course, there’s always my ever changing feelings about stuff and things; those have to be aired out too, lest I exploded from crazy.  And what about the sweet, sweet happenings over on tumblr?  Like so…

FROM TUMBLR: Why yes, I am researching how to shave my cat. I’m no “cat expert” but I don’t see how this could end badly.

And there’s always room for reposts from my college blog!  GGGAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

See, you guys?  It’s too much! I’m overwhelmed and much more interested in knitting and tumblr right now, but I’ll find a way to get up to date, blog-wise, at some point.




And that, my friends,  is what you call making something out of nothing.

My little one, Torrie, as a very young, web-saavy cat.

Remember when I told you luverly peoples about my old college website yesterday? Well, these are the graphics I made for it!  Just look at them…now, I’m no professional website designer, but I’m pretty sure people don’t use powder blue, blue blue, light pink, hot pink, and melon red as the stars of any website’s palette.  They’re all kind of washed out and seem to make the reading “challenging.”  They’re also twee as fuck and reminiscent of a twelve year old Hello Kitty fan’s design aesthetic.  Regardless, I did and do love these colors and I still like looking at these little experiments in Photoshoppery.

So, this first one (up there) was the banner for my links page; shocking, no?  I called it “Hot Links” because I thought it sounded clever and because I think I was aiming for that crucial, hot dog lover demographic.  I was also a lot more into fonts back then.  I forget the name of that one, but it’s round and fun looking.

It hate to be all Angela-from-The-Office, you guys, but I fucking love cats.  More importantly, I love my cat and that seems like justification enough for a whole web page devoted to her and her kitten-y exploits.  Oooh!  I should pull up the text from that page and post it, riveting! Again, notice the weird font and the fact that it is different from the previous font.  I knew then that sites should have a consistent look and feel, but I just wanted to use a bunch of crazy fonts all over the place!

Hmm, not really sure what I used the pink and red hearts border for.  I mean, it’s awesome, but still…myserious.  It might have been a border for all the Jack-in-his-underwear shots on the Jack Black mash book page.  Maybe it’s some kind of code?  I guess we’ll never know.

Awww, wook at da wittle staws and hawts and snowfwakes! Ugh, so cute!  Again, not sure what I used it for (a header?) but it definitely belongs in the Hall of Cute.

I don’t care what you guys say, I love the old Blog, Sweet Blog logo and I’m seriously considering bringing it out of retirement.  The picture was from, of all things, a haunted house photo shoot I was on.  All of the pictures turned out to be an awful mess mystery, but I liked the stars hanging from the ceiling in this one.  Except for the new, different font (Bauhaus something?) it looks like it fits in with the rest of the site.

And finally, this little beauty is from the header I designed for Dr. John Clark’s comp sci ethics class, CSC 4735-Computers, Society, & Ethics.  We had to create a blog for the class and post a weekly bit on whatever ethical topics struck our fancy that week.  No, I won’t be reposting those. It was a fun assignment and I tied it in with the rest of my site and personal blog.  Wacky font with hearts for dots + Rodin’s The Thinker = Best College Ethics Blog Banner ever!

What did your college ethics blog graphics look like?  How have you incorporated Auguste Rodin’s work into your web sites?

the view from home by anna hell

O hai internet friends!

I may have mentioned it before, but I recently perfected my home NAS setup and I have been doing a lot of joy riding in the way back machine, adding older pictures to my flickr account and thinking about migrating posts from my old blog site.

I had a web site in college back in the early Naughties.  The site consisted of weird experiments in hand-coded HTML, pictures of Jack Black in his underwear, and handmade site graphics.  I’ll share more later, but here’s the link to one of my favorite posts from days gone by…

The College Years: The Great Sandwich Conspiracy

I’ll just be posting the links becuase I to pretend like these posts were always part of Blog, Sweet Blog, so they should be cataloged accordingly.

If you’re just too damn busy to read the whole thing (I never was pithy), here’s a highlight…

Having survived the Safeway peanut butter crisis, I completed my shopping and made my way up to the checkout. I chose a line with an older woman on the cash register and a young kid (maybe 16 or 17) on bagging detail. When my peanut butter and jelly came up for bagging, the kid said to me, “Aha! It appears that you have fallen prey to The Great Sandwich Conspiracy!” The checker and I both ignored him. The kid waited until I had completed my grocery transaction when he hit me again.

him: Pardon me, but do you realize you have fallen prey to The Great Sandwich Conspiracy?

me: What on Earth are you talking about?

him: I see you have purchased both Jif peanut butter and Smuckers jelly. Don’t you see? Jif and Smuckers are both owned by the same company. It’s a sandwich conspiracy!

me: That’s great kid, really, but have you ever noticed that Jif and Smuckers are the most prominently featured products in that aisle? It wouldn’t be too crazy to suggest that Safeway is in league with the makers of Jif and Smuckers…perhaps they are all owned by the same company!

him: Why Madame, if that’s true, I’ll eat my hat!

LOL, the old days were fun, weren’t they? Then there’s some more dialogue about Superman and Lois Lane, a thrilling comparison between Peter Pan and Jif peanut butters and a sweet picture of a lion, I think…maybe a car chase.  You should totally read the whole thing!

I hope you enjoy this little slice of Blog, Sweet Blog history.  I’ll try to repost the better ones (look for the friendly, The College Years prefix), but you should really read them all, because…well… that’s what Internet friends do, right?

I sure wish my job was Internetting, because I’d be sooooo productive, all the time.  I should be cleaning (or otherwise getting ready for my sis to come over) right now, but I thought I’d share some of my recent Goodwill finds instead.

I went there in search of a flower vase or two, some picture frames, and scrap fabric for embroidering.  I ended up with that and a little bit more and spent like $50!  Et voila!

all the granny's in the house say yay-yeah!

Ok, so when exactly do you start turning into your mother/grandmother?  If I’m remembering my childhood correctly, my maternal grandmother had loads of these Hummel pictures around her house.  I liked them when I was little because they were kind of cute and, hey, if my grandmother liked them, they had to be awesome, right?  I grew up and left these in childhood because they were a bit too cutesy.   They had like five of these in the store that day.  Most of them were the ultra cute, Precious Moments-style drawings.  These two little darlings caught my eye because they’re so bleak and raw, like they were drawn sometime between the Great Depression and the rise of Nazi Germany.

found landscape art

This one caught my eye because it’s faded and a little sad, like somebody loved it in the early 70′s then gave up on it.  I have no idea where it’s from, but it could be Colorado somewhere.  I was talking to a friend of mine about this picture and I mentioned how I liked it because it seemed sad.  I realized I say that a lot about the art I like. You don’t have to have a D. Psy. to figure that one out, but I’m often drawn to the wistful and gloomy.  I realize that not a lot of other people are and I feel kind of weird citing that as a reason to like anything.

so many frames, just waiting to be filled

Did somebody mention frames?  I mainly bought these to fill with embroidery pieces that I have yet to finish, but I might also use them for general decorating.  The next piece I’m going to do (an embroidery of this) will be bigger than these, maybe 11″x14″, but these will be nice for a low commitment piece when I get tired of working on the big stuff.  Maybe this will finally find a home?

I did manage to find some fabric for embroidering and two vases, but they’re not really worth a picture.  Do you like thrift stores?  What do you like to shop for when you’re in one?

party in the air by anna hell

So, like I said, I have encountered nought but a string of clueless, mouth breathing, dimwits on the Internet since John and I broke up.  Sorry, that sounds mean.  I meant to say, I’ve been meeting a lot of  quivering, lumpy, shit-for-brains, fucktards who don’t know the difference between a fuckin’ lady and wet towel-snapping their bro’s pasty, middle aged, wake-me-up-when-you’re-done-having-sex-with-me-you-boring-wanker ass online lately. What, too much?

It’s my own fault, really.  I assume that showing a straight guy any interest, pre-surgery, is a waste of time and will mostly end in tears.  So I sit and wait to pounce upon whichever gentleman of quality happens to stop by my online love shack. Sadly, very few suitable suitors do…stop by my shack, that is.

The less suitable suitors send me these dumb letters or try to instant message me.  I think this bit from my online dating profile clears up my feelings on both…

Send me a message if…

…actually, don’t instant message me at all, I kind of hate it. But feel free to send me a thoughtful, interesting letter if you think you’re not a dullard, have something in common with me, and aren’t going to waste my time.

Ok, that sounds harsh. I’m actually a nice girl, but you’d be surprised at the amount of people who are really into me right up until they read my profile or who are wholly incapable of expressing themselves with words. I like words. I like people who know how to use words. I really like wordy people who really like me

Keep that in mind.  I loathe instant messaging (there are exceptions) and I really like people who know their way around the words.  Here’s a recent letter…

Hi gorgeous….How are you today?

Yep, that was the whole letter.  I suddenly had a case of the bitchy regrets, so I sent a him a non-committal reply…

Fine, thanks.

To which he replied, a week later…

Hi gorgeous…Anna…

Such wordsmith… -ery? -ing? -inosis? I kind of wanted to mail him my panties with the words, “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” scrawled on the backside in gold glitter nail polish.  But then I thought of the children, and my mother.  Neither would approve.

I also get…

interesting story. wanna chat?

Not in the slightest, but I thank you for asking! And…

Very attractive. I read your profile and like it. I also like that you are bisexual. I think bisexual women make the best lovers. Would like to hear from you.

Hmm, where should I start.  No.  Gross?  What?  Really? Actually, that one had a sort of European, man-whore, bravado, charm to it.  But still, no.  Another?

Nice pic and profile, would be nice to get to know you. sorry i am not writing more at the moment, i have to crash lol, its really late

Aww, thanks for writing, Sunshine.  Tell your Mom I said hi!

Another guy keyed in on my one line profile joke about working in a secret government lab, because all of us enginerds do. He was cute and had a very good profile, so I indulged him…

Him: was it the san dimas lab or were you out in NM? Not that I know anything

Me: No, not that one, but I have been to Los Alamos! I work for another, non-secret lab in Colorado You profile reminds me of mine…long, interesting, wordy, partly in French…ok maybe not French, but complex and interesting.

Him: well you have to make yourself stand out somehow in this crazy world! So what were you up to at these labs of ours? I have no desire to ever be attached to any of these establishments but then again how else am I going to get cool stories to tell at the watering holes when I am old and decrepit?

Me: I went to Los Alamos as side trip during a Santa Fe vacation. I’m an engineer at a lab here. We do communications research.

Him: So did you have a TS security clearance?

Me: ???

I think he was trying to offer me a job or recruit me for…something.  Even though my profile says I’m looking for “new friends”, it’s a lie.  I’m really looking for my other half.  I’ll take friendship as a consolation prize or as the start of passionate love affair, but shooting the breeze about our national research infrastructure doesn’t seem like fun to me and those aren’t the kind of friends I’m looking for.

And finally, this guy…

Hrrm, this is getting to be extra-long and, unfortunately, there’s more to share.  How’s about we meet back here next time?  We can talk about the “winkers” and online dating Do’s and Don’ts (ok, mostly Don’ts) next time!

glittering, savory by anna hell

Well, I’m back from Las Vegas, a few dollars poorer, but richer for the experience, insert your own cliché.  More on that later, promise.  In the meantime, let’s talk about about some recent goings-on with my ex.

So, if you’re just tuning in, I broke up with my first, post-transition boyfriend at the end of January.  I was/have been kind of sad about it, but these things happen.  I feel loads better now and I suppose this is as good a “writer’s experience” as any.  We traded a few hurtful emails for a week after breaking up, but I hadn’t contacted him or heard from him since then.  He sent me a hey! what’s new? email, apropos of nothing, last Monday.  That was weird all by itself, but the fact that he made me feel like he was just catching up with an old friend after a few weeks apart instead of randomly pinging a person who’d had feelings for him and who had willingly touched his penis made it seem extra awkward.

We have a history, him and I, officially.  We didn’t part on the greatest of terms and we certainly didn’t agree to remain friends.  Throughout my life, I’ve observed a strict as-soon-as-we-break-up-I-don’t-want-to-see-you-or-hear-from-you-or-think-about-you-ever-again-seriously policy.  I started to reevaluate that with my previous ex.  It seemed wrong to cut out such an important part of my life.  I’m beginning to believe that these people’s presence in my life is/has been meaningful and necessary.  I think learning to value that is better than hiding from pain. I relayed my newfound love for ex-loves to him in a meagbitchy, accusatory way…

[Redacted],

I know you’re “not trying to ‘sell’ anything” but you contacting me out of the blue, like nothing ever happened is weird for me and a little hard to deal with.  I haven’t contacted you since we broke up because I didn’t want to talk to you, not because I felt like I had to stay away or give you space.  Are you trying, in some ham-fisted, obtuse way to say that you want to be friends?  I don’t know, maybe.

For the record, I love emails.  I sent you a lot of them, remember?  I don’t care for text messaging, but it has its place and I like them even better if they’re a precursor to a phone call.  I’m kind of meh on the Skype thing with you.  If you want to talk to me, why don’t we just get coffee or something?  I can like throw a rock at your house and it seems totally absurd to use Skype if we don’t have to.

Regards and such,

Anna

Ugh.  I think I could have managed a nicer, more diplomatic response but I am a woman scorned and them’s my feelings, y’all.

I’m not opposed to being friends with him, but our history gets in the way.  I’m funny…it’s like I hold my friends to a higher standard of behavior than my lovers.  So, where a boyfriend’s inability to express himself is merely annoying (at first, anyway) it can be the reason to end a friendship.  His foibles were charming and tolerable when we were intimate, but now they’re all dealbreakers.

If you haven’t guessed, his awkward attempt to reach out/make me crazy/whatever totally rubbed me the wrong way.  Combine that with the online dating winners I’ve encountered recently (oh, just you wait, my pretties) and I kind of feel like giving up on guys.  Are all of them developmentally disabled when it comes to expressing themselves?  Is this how it’s going to be?  Like, if you’re interested in me and want me in your life, is a little wooing with the nice words too much to ask for?  Apparently.  I haven’t heard back from him.

Maybe it’s me?  Maybe my pre-surgery standards are too high?  Maybe I am the megabitch ice queen who’s incapable of settling and doomed to a multi-cat spinsterhood?  I wish I knew, Internets.  If I did, I’d just go ahead and adopt another kitty right now.

I think it’s more likely that I’m a complex, complicated, somewhat damaged, skittish, too-smart-for-her-own-good girl who will find her other half, eventually.

In the Mouth a Desert

Conduit for Sale!

O hai!

You’ve reached the corporate headquarters of Blog, Sweet Blog Worldwide Consolidated Holdings, Ltd.  Unfortunately, no one is available to take your calls or answer your emails this week.  We’re going to try our hand at love and adventure, Las Vegas style…maybe attend a conference.

People say that Las Vegas is bad for us; he has a kind of major gambling problem and a thing for showgirls and binge drinking.  They say he’s broken and damaged — suicidal even — that he lives on thrills and dollar bills but can only return tarnished fantasies and empty gestures.   You know what they say about stories, though.  The other side is that, every once in a while, he’ll drop his charismatic, panicky, hustling swagger for a certain someone.  At once, he’ll recall his buried innocence and shower her with as much sweetness and warmth as he can remember, until his weakness returns like the dawn’s early hangover.  The fantasy always ends and few decide to the work is worth the reward.

We’ve got all week to find that sweet, young man everybody warned us about and see if we can make it work; we’re not leaving here until we find out…or until our plane leaves.  Either way, we’ll be back next week, increasing shareholder value and creating best-in-class personal blogging content.

Until then, we remain,

The Blog, Sweet Blog staff

The Naked Redhead did a very funny Awkward Moments post the other day.  I liked it so much, I decided to steal her idea and make it my own.  How’s that saying go?  Stealing is sincerely flattering?  Good artists steal, great artists steal more?  Stealing is the soul of wit?  I don’t know, whatever.  Sorry I’m not very good at “history” or whatever, you guys.

According to your heart x-ray, Mr. Evans, it looks like you have four...oops, sorry, three minutes to live.

1 little piggy, 2 little piggies, 4 little piggies, 6...7...DARREN!

I don't care what he says, there's no puppies in concrete.

In retrospect, the Gunther Grass "The Tin Drum" commemorative statuette seemed like a bad choice.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

What do you mean you're "super-duper gay?"

cherry blossoms by Cherry Creek, February 28, 2002

I don’t think I’ll have much time to blog this week, but I wanted to say so in a quick update rather than letting the tubes grow cold and quiet.

The above photograph is from a new photo set of mine on flickr and it’s one that I’ve always liked a lot.  I took them on a cold, late-February Saturday in 2002.  It was the weirdest day.  There had been weeks of nice, spring-like weather and our part of the city decided it was time to green up again.  I was driving to school to visit a friend and I was struck by the contrast between the misty, gray, cold day and the first blush of spring.  It was lovely and magical and I asked to borrow my friend’s camera so I wouldn’t ever forget it.

Speaking of, I just unpacked a lot of old computer files onto a new NAS, so forgive me if I start posting a lot of blog entries and photos from the way back machine.

It was sad to see the end of the Winter Olympics last night, but I was ready for them to be over; I was really emotional for all of them and you can only be an Olympic shut-in for so long.  I don’t much care for sports, but I love the Olympics (winter more than summer).  I love how the Olympics shrink the distance between us and how we all get to experience the hospitality and sights of the host city, at least vicariously.  They’re like a two-week experiment in being a good neighbor and on your best behavior and they always make me happy. I can’t wait for London in 2012!

I think the end of the Olympics means that the business of winter is finally over and that we can start again.  I don’t know about you, but I’m so ready to put this gloomy gray suck-hole of a season back in the box.  The photo and set are also a nice little reminder that spring is coming.  It may not seem like it where you are, but it is.  Really…I have it on good authority.  Until then, courage.

xoxo

One of the awesome (not awesome) things about HRT is that I get to have fun with puberty all.over.again.  Remember  puberty?  Remember how everything was so intense and awkward and profound and boring and amazing and miserable and lovely and like it was all taking forever?  That’s every week for me.  I feel like I’m totally in sync with all the 16 year old girls in the world who wear too much eyeliner and always keep a copy of Prozac Nation and The Virgin Suicides on their nightstand; mah tumblr followings seem to agree.  And that can be kind of…inconvenient(?) when you play a 30-something engineer lady in real life.

Some days/weeks/months are better than others.  This last time was hard, but not hard enough to do me in, I guess.  I’m feeling better, and I think it motivated me to finish these…

now we can be together forever by anna hell

eternity by anna hell

They’re photographs and I first tried them a few years ago.   Click the photos for the rest of the series.  I know they’re kind of lazy art (though I’ve seen much lazier), but I think they’d make nice embroidery pieces at some point.  Lazy or no, I’m still happy with how they turned out and I feel like this most recent, bleak period was the only time I could have finished them.  So there.

Also…I can’t stop listening to this song.

Well, I’m off to make a get-well card for my mother.  Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

The caption said, "Sparkie says, 'Choose Safety.'" but we all know who started that fire, don't we?

*ed. we’ve had three more since I wrote this. wtff?
Coworker instant messaging excerpt with regards to the FIFTH building-evacuating fire alarm we’ve had this month….

it’s not that i don’t love the occasional, random fire alarm, i do. in moderation, they’re a nice opportunity to hang out in the parking lot, catch up with friends and peep you guys in those orange hats. but when we have one every other week, i kind of feel like i’m in that story with the wolves and the crying. they make me want to stay in my office to see if i catch on fire.

Also, I’ve had it up to here (points to high place) with all this winter and it’s snowing. again.   GUUUUHRRRRRRNNNNNNGGGGGGAAAARRRRGGHHH!!!

let's just pretend this is from a Joke Off segment from SNL's "Weekend Update"

I posted this on mah tumblr last night, but I’m having second thoughts about keeping it there.  I want that page to be different than this one…more visual, darker, dreamier.  I feel like the jokes have found a home here (in a wayward-home-for-lost-ideas sort of way) but words beyond poetry or lyrics seem alien over there.  I’m ok with that.  Maybe I’ll start a Molls-style tumblr at some point, but keeping it special and dark today feels right.  Until I get it figured it out, sorry for the cross posting.

Anyway…  Some of you may recall the recurring joke-off segment from the Tina Fey/Jimmy Fallon-era of Saturday Night Live‘s “Weekend Update.”  The premise was that the two would battle each other for who could tell the most jokes (not the funniest) on a topic in a certain time period.   I’m sure they wrote them ahead of time, but to me, it seemed like what it might be like to watch them pitching in a writer’s meeting.

I would love to make this a regular Blog, Sweet Blog segment, but, as I can’t recall any recurring segments on this blog, we’ll see how that goes.  The idea is that I’ll try to think up around five jokes in a short time (~15 minutes), then post them for your “entertainment.”  Feel free to chime in with your own jokes for this or any other topic.  Ugh, now that I’ve used the world’s longest, most unfunny setup to strangle the life out of this bit…

So, I’m in the middle of cleaning the house and I just got done with the main bathroom. It was so skeevy, it felt like the perfect topic for a joke-off, naturally.

My bathroom was so dirty…

-I seriously considered getting hooked on crystal meth to get the energy to finish cleaning.

-while I was cleaning, the executive producers of Hoarders called to pitch me a new show called Dirty, Dirty Slobs….because they wanted me to host…from my filthy bathroom…because it was so gross.

-the people that live in my head wouldn’t even go in there.

-a xxx fetish website emailed me a job offer. I had to tell them it wasn’t that kind of dirty.

-it made my mother cry.

-just writing this makes me want a to take a Silkwood shower.

Mood:	la dee da
Music:	Little House on the Prairie-”A Most Precious Gift”

tall, distinguished, famous...not pretty

Dear A

tall, distinguished, famous...not pretty

Dear Answer Lady:

I need your advice. I’m a huge Abraham Lincoln fan, but I can’t grow a Lincoln-esque chin curtain to save my life! To make matters worse, I’ve started growing hair out of my ears and I have more back hair than a county fair Tilt-a-Whirl attendant. What gives? Even though I’m a little bit fascinated by my new ear buddies, I know they need to go. I’ve tried everything…trimming, punching, praying real hard, but they keep coming back! What should I do?!!

Yours truly,


Ear Wig


————————————-

Sorry dear, but this is the mailbox for Ask an Engineer!, the nation’s leading weekly romance and “lifestyle” advice column written by an engineer.  Answer Lady‘s mailbox is located at help@answerlady.com.

If I may…Ask an Engineer!‘s official position on unwanted ear and body hair is ew, grody. However, unwanted hair is a common affliction and Ask an Engineer! neither judges nor mocks any reader’s unfortunate, grody circumstance.  Off the record, Ask an Engineer! suggests tweezing the offending hair(s) or retaining the services of a professional skilled in the art of electrolysis. Ask an Engineer! further suggests that trimmed hair always grows back and that it is not an effective or permanent hair removal technique…ditto for punching and praying.

Finally, Ask an Engineer! thinks a smooth, baby face can be very nice and kindly reminds you that, while Abraham Lincoln was one of our nation’s brightest and best leaders, he was a horribly unattractive man and should not be upheld as a standard of male beauty.

Happy Holidays!


The Ask an Engineer! staff

*Ask an Engineer! is a real idea I thought of pitching to some weeklies for a couple of seconds.  It’s kind of based on an email I sent my ex once. The idea was that people would ask me questions and I’d respond with a mixture of absurd, engineering analysis and folksy, homespun humor. I know, it’s been done, but never with an engineer…I think.

my stats, let me show you them

So, yesterday was kind of real busy here at the offices of  Blog, Sweet Blog Enterprises, Limited. Turns out, Sarah has quite a few readers and they really seem to like clicking links, viewing pages, and leaving lovely comments.

The nutrient-dense info-graphic of my desktop quantifies the yesandyes.org effect.  Usually, my daily page views fall somewhere between none and very little.  Yesterday, my page views went up a little bit…somewhere around WTFZOMFG!1!!! Honestly, I didn’t even know the numbers on my little stat-o-meter went that high. I thought they were just letting me use the WordPress Junior Blogger Fun Kit with the small numbers until I turned pro.  LOL, and if you click through for the larger size picture, you’ll notice a certain someone’s search for how to save print screen in the upper right hand corner. Maybe I should keep the Junior Fun Kit for a little bit longer.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, everyone.  You’re welcome anytime.  Seriously.  Come over tomorrow.  And subscribe.  Tell your friends

I’ll be answering comments on Sarah’s site later in the day and may repost them/the interview back here at some point.

would you like to see the other side of me?

In a move guaranteed to drive me to the very edge of sanity and eat away at my last scrap of free time, I have decided to activate my tumblr page.  I’m going to try to keep with the tumblr mantra of mostly pictures and pithy text posts, but we’ll see how that goes.  Come, join me in the tumblrosity, won’t you?

Also, I was interviewed by Sarah Von, she of the super wonderful yes and yes, last week and the interview drops tomorrow.  Stop by her site for a self-important, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny exercise in navel gazing.  If you’d rather launch from here, I’ll be posting the link tomorrow when it all goes down.

Finally, this is like the third post this week!  I know it will pass, but I’m enjoying the illusion of productivity.

the object of my affection, the Pashley Princess Sovereign

So, I’m right in the middle of a feverish (as in it’s sort of driving me mad) search for a new bicycle.  I have a bike now, a shiny silvery mountain bike, but we’ve grown apart since she came to live with me four years ago.   Last spring, I started to crave a more simple, fun bicycle experience instead of an aggressive, exercise-y one.

At first, I thought I might like one of those new-fangled cruisers all the kids are talking about…

the Electra Gigi

I knew I wanted a cute bike with an upright ride, a comfy seat, a little bell, fenders, a basket and at least three gears…all for under three hundred dollars   My expectations may be the, how do you say, unrealistic? I scoured craigslist and asked friends to ask around for sweet deals.

Not content to leave well enough alone, I kept researching and found the wonderful blog, Let’s Go Ride a Bike. Unfortunately, the sage advice of Dottie and Trisha, the blog’s authors, proved to be my undoing, budget-wise.  Both of them had an interest in well-made, much more expensive bicycles and my dreams of cheap, third-hand cruisers were replaced with better dreams filled with shiny, European, heirloom bicycles…

The WorkCycles Oma from Dutch Bike Co. Chicago

Unfortunately, these are just over $1500 new, which is waaaayyyyy more than I wanted to spend.  Even more unfortunately, these bikes touched me in a special, magical place where my obsessive crazy took over and wouldn’t let me rest until I possessed one of these lovely wonder bikes.

I was doing all right, coping with the giant, gorgeous bike-shaped hole in my heart, until a friend of mine Facebooked me this…

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/ad_for_a_pashley_princess

this bike is usually $1000 plus. i asked him if he’d ship, and he has more of them!!!! contact him if you wanna get in on this!

To which I replied…

OMG!!! Besides the Azor Oma, that is the other bike I’m totally in love with! Are you going to buy one too?

Fast forward a few hours and multiple confused emails later…my friend was working out how to get her new Pashley Princess Sovereign (see top picture) shipped to her house for like $500.  Bitch! I ended the day with nothing.  The guy only had the one bike and the rest of craigslist and ebay was a beautiful bike ghost town.

I’ve had the bad fever since then.  I’ve seen a couple of ok deals in the interim, but nothing to make me want to plunk down $500 (or more) that I don’t really have.  The good news is that I now know what I want can’t live without: a Pashley Princess Sovereign, a WorkCylces Azor Oma, or a Gazelle Toer Populair.  So if any of y’all know someone, put in a good word for me?  Pretty please?

I know I’ll find something, eventually, but it hardly matters at the moment.  It’s a winter wonderland right now and not exactly inspiring, new bike weather.  But winter can’t last forever (right?) and me and my new bike will be ready for a super-fun spring whenever it decides to get here.

Is there a special little bicycle in your life?  What springtime shenanigans are you looking forward to?

I was listening to NPR this morning on my snowy, awful drive to work and I heard a funny soundbite from The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He was speaking at  a press conference for something to do with Klamath River water usage.  Here’s the pro recap…

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the parties for forgetting their differences in the interests of a better future, then invoked his movie roles as The Terminator, saying, “Hasta la vista” to the dams, and adding, “I can see already the salmon fish are screaming, `I’ll be back.’”

By JEFF BARNARD, Associated Press

Upon hearing this, I thought, “Does he always quote his movies every time he’s out in public?  If so, does he just use lines from his well known movies, or does he try to slip in lines from his entire oeuvre?”  Yes, I say oeuvre when I’m talking to myself.

Honestly, I have no idea whether he does or not.  I hope not. I don’t live in California or follow his career, so I’m totally out of touch with his speeches and goings on.

Anyway, I think you all know where I’m going with this…

Imagined Instances in Which Arnold Schwarzenegger Awkwardly Shoehorns Lines From  His Movies Into His Gubernatorial Duties

Reporter: Governor Schwarzenegger! Any reaction to the Groundhog Day results from Punxsutawney?

Governator: ‘For us, zer is no spring. Just ze wind dat smells fresh before ze storm.’  VIE DO YOU PEOPLE TEENK DEES GROUNDHOG EES TINY WEATHERMAN?!!!

“…so den I said to ze Batman, ‘You’re not sending me to ze cooler!’  Ha ha…because I vas playing ze Ice Man! Get eet?  But seriously, ze Girl Scouts are a wonderful organization and vee tank dem for all they have done for zee great state of Caleefornia.”

While greeting attendees at an Interfaith Prayer Breakfast…

Governator: What gods do you pray to?

Rabbi: Well, I’m Jewish…sooooo, you know, the one God.  What about you?

Governator: To Crom… but I seldom pray to him, he doesn’t listen.

Rabbi: I…sorry, did you say Crom?

Governator: Ha ha ha, just keeding!  Remember that line from Conan?  I also pray to your God!

“To ze bears and ze chipmunks and ze moutain lions and ze moose and ze…majestic buffalo and…all de odder voodland creatures zat call Yosemite home, I say to you, ‘Prepare for a bitter harvest; winter has come at last.’”

Governator: I remember days like dees ven my father took me to ze foreest and vee ate vild blueberries. More dan 20 years ago. I vas just a boy of four or five. Ze leaves ver so dark and green den. Ze grass smelled sweet with ze spring wind..

Woman yelling from audience: Isn’t that a line from Conan the Barbarian?  What about the whales?

Governator: Thank you for ze cookies. I look forward to tossing dem!

Man yelling from audience: That doesn’t even make any sense!  Why aren’t you answering our questions?

Governator: I’m not a pervert! I vas just looking for a Turbo Man doll!

Woman yelling from audience: I think his time in office has dulled him to a cruel, catchphrase-spouting parody of himself.  I pity you and the monster you have become, Mr. Governor.

Governator: Eet’s not a tumor!

I thought I could get in a line from Junior or Twins, but alas, it was not to be.  Is it my fault that those two movies were wholly unfunny and entirely lacking in quotable quotes?

my feelings, let me show you them

So…not in a great mood on this, our most made-up of holidays.  I broke up with John for reals last Monday.  I know, shocking, right?  How could such a precarious, ill-fated pairing not last forever?

We were only months into our relationship and we were still some time away from reaching any of the big relationship milestones (exchanging i love you‘s, meeting family members, etc.), but it’s still hard.  I think we always look into the mirror of intro-retrospection after a breakup.  Was it my fault?  What did I do wrong?  Am I unlovable?  In my heart, did I know this is where we’d end? For the record, the answers are: not really, dunno, no, and yes.  I also thought about my previous ex and filtered the horrendous, wrenching end of that relationship through the end of this one…which is soooo fun.

I’m not going to go into the sordid details of the breakup.  I don’t hate John and I’m not about to cast aspersions and sling the mud.  I think our end had more to do with us being at different places in our emotional lives than anything else.  He’s recovering from a five year old divorce and I’m still really new to all of this.

The actual end came shortly after our first serious fight.  It was about something silly and random but that trivial thing was the perfect illustration of everything that was wrong with us.  It all just fell apart from there.  I think it was a good place to part ways, but those almost accidental endings seem so jarring.

Despite what my embroidery says, I’m not all bitter and angry.  I’m lucky to have the love of my family and friends and I very much value their presence in my life.  Then again, things are pretty awful right now, so I feel like engaging in a little bitter, dark, vulgar embroidery is totally justified…at least for one day.  I’ll do something cuter tomorrow, promise

I just found this excellent reminder to help us keep it all in perspective…

All the heart-shaped boxes of chocolate goodness will be half off tomorrow. Treat yourself.

LOL, good one, Dottie.

No words, just arts and crafts so good they make my reptilian brain want to recoil in jealous, retching horror.  Do yourself a favor and click the image you like for a much larger version.

Waves on Winter Rolling by Steve Morris

Loneliness by Rory Dean

Popcorn Clouds by april cakes

The Familiar at Solstice by Scott Anderson

Three Girls by Allison Schulnik

The King by Joe Becker

I'll Be Your Mirror by Tobias Schalken

Die Aufnahme by Neo Rauch

Tagged: allison schulnik, april cakes, art, die aufnahme, fuckfuckfuckfuck, i'll be your mirror, joe becker, lonlieness, modern art, neo rauch, painting, popcorn clouds, rory dean, scott anderson, steve morris, the familiar at solstice, the king, three girls, tobias schalken, waves on winter rolling ]]> http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/art-of-harkness/feed/ 6 annahell http://ny-image0.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.54424620.jpg [loneliness_1.jpg] Popcorn Clouds by April Cakes [the_familiar_at_solstice.jpg] [Three_Girls.jpg] [theking.jpg] [2008+RAUNE0105-200.jpg] http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/videos-about-crafting-cats-and-murder/ http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/videos-about-crafting-cats-and-murder/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:37:58 +0000 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/?p=1573 ]]> Mood: le sigh Music: Memory Tapes-Treeship

As you all know, this isn’t one of them America’s Funnest Video Blogs and I try not to make a habit of reposting videos.  However, sometimes a heartbreaking work of staggering video genius reveals itself to me and I am compelled share its wonders with you, my magical Internet friends.  Behold!


Need some motivation to get crafty?  Leslie Hall can make that shit happen, y’all.

Finally, the secret connection between cats, keyboards, stabby things, and police training videos is revealed!

And finally, a video essay on how I spent my summer vacation that one time…

You are the welcome.

Tagged: a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, america's funniest video blogs, behold, hi dave eggers!, knives vs cops vs keyboard cat, leslie hall, make that shit happen, my internet friends, stabby things, summer vacation, the sandwitch project, y'all ]]> http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/videos-about-crafting-cats-and-murder/feed/ 0 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/talk-about-the-weather/ http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/talk-about-the-weather/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:50:05 +0000 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/?p=1061 ]]> Mood: Like one of them robots Music: The Beatles-Happiness is a Warm Gun

loading dock dusk by anna hell

ed. This post has nothing to do with my current, mostly awful state of mind.  I wrote it a few months ago and never got around to finishing it.  I hadn’t posted in a while and this was 75% done, so I decided to use it in lieu of discussing recent events and talking about my feelings and whatnot.  Enjoy!

Sometimes, I talk to my cat, Torrie.  And by “talk” I don’t mean we have long, in-depth conversations on the state of the American health care system or that we engage in timed, joke-off competitions. No.  For one thing, Torrie shares my longing for a single-payer, European-style, socialized medical system; not much to talk about there.  For another thing, cats have almost no sense of humor. Fact.

No, by “talk to my cat,” I mean I sometimes verbalize random thoughts and the cat stares back at me with a mix of 90% blank incomprehension and 10% formulating a plan to kill me and take over the house.

So, I was talking to the cat a while ago and I mentioned something about the weather, something like…

“Can you believe how cold it is, Torrie?  And it’s only November!”

But it could just as well have been…

“Can you believe how hot it is, Torrie?  And it’s already September!”

…or…

“Can you believe how much it’s been raining, Torrie?  And Colorado is an arid state!”

…but we all know I was really trying to say…

“Can you believe I’m talking to you, Torrie?  I think I’m losing my mind!“

And there, under the glaring, embarrassing spotlight of self-realization, I finally accepted the fact that I am becoming an old, crazy person who sometimes talks/complains to her cat/other people about the weather.

It’s sad, really.  I’m a thoughtful, college-educated, modern woman and I was raised by thoughtful, educated people who taught me the lessons of polite, WASP-y conversation early and often.  One should never discuss politics, religion, income, sex, or the weather in front of guests or mixed company. I know talking about the weather is like hitching a ride to Dullsville (so then, writing a blog about it must be like buying property and joining the Dullsville PTA), but I just can’t help it.

It’s so effortless!  Perhaps it has something to do with my long-lost agrarian ancestry?  Now, I’m not aware of any farming ventures in any of my family’s past (I think we’re mostly made up of merchants, bons vivants, adventurers, and the idle poor), but it’s positively ridiculous to imagine that a distant part of my family hasn’t had their hands in some soil, somewhere.  Maybe my inane weather chatter is my body’s way of telling me to “get back to the land” or that “modern life is rubbish?”  I don’t know.  I wish my body would just speak up sometime…and use complete sentences.

In conclusion, I am getting old, crazy, and boring and I’m somewhat ok with that.  If you should happen to become ensnared in a discussion with me that has taken a turn for the climatic, have pity on me…and help me change the subject…to Art or something….I like Art.

So, it seems like everything in my life these days is turning into a big pile of stinky brown doody.  I feel like I’m just watching myself barely make it through each day and I’m not sure what to do about it all.  To make matters worse, I also don’t feel like blogging about it and that usually helps.

As compromise, let’s talk about my new camera.  As I said, I hadn’t taken many pictures since losing my camera in Washington D.C. (along with an entire, striking National Mall at Night photo set), and I wanted to replace it.  I ended up buying one of these…

Canon PowerShot S90

It was pretty expensive for a compact, point and shoot, and I could have bought a nice, entry-level DLSR body for a few dollars more.  I chose my little camera for, what I think are, good reasons which I’ll discuss after the period and spaces.

First, there are the issues of cost and portability.  I think I’ve gotten a lot of good pictures from my pocket cameras and I’m loathe to lug around an expensive, high-maintenance image maker.

I also have a low opinion of photography as an art form.  Sorry.  I like taking pictures and I even try to make a lot of “arty” photos, but it’s easy for me and I feel like there’s very little skill involved.  Drawing is hard.  Painting takes years to master.  Sculpture, fiber arts, dance, and music composition are all very challenging and each involves some practiced technique.  For the most part, I feel like photography is just a way of curating life.  I also like to carry a camera around with me whenever I can and taking photos all the time makes the act of photography seem less special; more common, like a sketch.

There are exceptional photographic artists, of course, but I don’t regret not buying a DSLR.

It’s a nice little camera.  I can set the aperture, shutter speed, it has a lot of ISO settings, a video mode, it can shoot in RAW format, it has manual focus, it fits in the little pocket in my purse or bus bag, and it has a decent wide-angle lens.   So, win win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win!

I got it on Wednesday and have been busy catching up on taking horrible photos of Miss Kitty, to wit…

the gruffalumox

…and…

relaxed cat is relaxing

And let’s not forget the arty photos in which I offer a glimpse of my naked sorrow, dread, and misery cloaked within the guise of the abstract and mundane…

Tagged: Anna, annahell, before i close my eyes, blog sweet blog, brown doody, canon powershot s90, canon s90, depressed, everything is the worst, frame a, national mall, new camera, photo, photography, red lorry yellow lorry, relaxing cat is relaxing, sad, sleepytime dunes, the gruffalumox, well of misery ]]> http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/everythings-the-worst-also-photos/feed/ 7 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/stitch-bitch-repeat-my-stuff/ http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/stitch-bitch-repeat-my-stuff/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:52:36 +0000 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/?p=1515 ]]> Mood: 10% wistful, 50% ebullient, 22% other Music: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs-Heads Will Roll

Continued from here.

Let’s just get right to it, shall we?  Here’s a picture of the scarf I completed right around the beginning of the new year…

Anna with scarf #1 FTW!

…and another look…

Who's a pretty scarfy scarf?

It’s my first real knitting project and I’m quite happy with how it turned out.  I used 17 gauge bamboo knitting needles and one skein of lovely, variegated, chunky alpaca (I think) wool.  The color is a weird, almost ugly combination of orange, magenta, purple and grey.

Mom bought me the yarn, some Addi turbo lace needles, and a copy of Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ‘n Bitch for my birthday when she and my aunt came out to visit.  My aunt taught me to knit when she was here, but it took me a couple of weeks of practice making swatches on cheap acrylic yarn before I felt ready to move to the more expensive yarn.  I didn’t follow a pattern, I just made a garter stitch (knit every row) and played with the width until it felt right.

It’s about 8″ wide, which is pretty wide for a scarf, and around 7′ long, which seems crazy, Dr. Who long.  Regardless, I love it.  We’ve had some really cold days here this year and it’s nice to have a soft woolen scarf to wrap around your head and neck like five times if need be.

Next up is my first foray into embroidery and cross stitch since I was a teeny tot.

untitled (lol) by Anna Hell

I apologize for the crap photos.  I’ve had to resort to using my webcam until I buy another, big girl’s camera.  Anyway, I started this project almost a year ago! I awoke from a feverish dream (or something) with the basics of this pattern in mind and I felt compelled to finish it…very slowly.  It’s approximately 5×7 inches and it felt like it took me a google-illion hours to finish.  The truth is prolly closer to 50 or 75 hours, but there are a lot of stitches in it.  I’m pretty happy with it, but I feel like it’s more of a sketch/practice piece than anything real.

This is the doodle I started the other day…

pop heart sketch by Anna Hell

I have an idea for how I might use this later, but it really just started off as a fun diversion after I finished the bohemiath above.  I know it sounds weird to take a break from needle work by doing some more needle work, but regular embroidery is way faster than cross stitch and it was nice to be able to sketch out something so fast.  Like I said, this might be incorporated into a larger piece (8×11 or pillow size?), but I just started this…

Elizabeth's Grace Lace Beret

…and I should really finish it before I get distracted with five other projects, as is my nature.  I’d also like to do a Blog, Sweet Blog title card and experiment with some “topographic” embroidery.

So, I’m happy to have finally finished a couple of projects, but only the heart thing and beret will count towards my viva la resolutions art things if I finish them this year.  Wish me luck!

What projects are you guys in the middle of/planning to start?

O hai Englandz! We'z gonna need to have deez castlz and landz, kthxbai!

If this seems out of order,  it’s because I started this the other day when I was home sick…and why I made reference to it here and showed some here. Let’s just pretend like this is a Blog, Sweet Blog time machine ride to the not-so-distant past!

O hai Interntubes!

So, I’m sick today, but I couldn’t help but share some of the cross stitch/embroidery and knitting work I’ve completed recently.   I also want to show you some of the super wonderful Innerwebz stitch art I’ve seen over the past couple of months.

I’m not sure if the other people’s stitch art thing will become a regular feature or not.  There are plenty of great websites that do this all the time, e.g. feeling stitchy, mr. x stitch, and craftster.org.  Also, I tend to think every.single.project I see on those sights is lovely and amazing.  I would just be re-posting every item I see and that’s hardly the sort of top-drawer, Blog, Sweet Blog curating you’ve come to expect.  I think I’ll just let the pros handle craft blogging and I’ll just add some of my new besty craft sites to the right-hand blog roll.

Let’s start with the some of the online projects I’ve really loved…

Max by mimilove, click the photo for her page!

So…have you ever been up in your own head, working on a certain project and you start thinking…

Wow, that is some good stuff right there.  I am soooo good at art!  I think I might even be sell-the-cat-move-to-Portland-and-join-an-art-collective good.

…and then you stumble onto something from Tod Hensley and it makes you feel like you just graduated from Baby’s First Art Class?  Well, that totally happened to me when I saw his work.  It’s a hurtful experience, but I highly recommend looking at super-talented artist’s work when you need to go back to keeping it real.

Untitled by Tod Hensley

The subject matter isn’t exactly something you’d show your mother (unless you’re me), but the stitching and design are expressionistic, tribal, folky, and sickeningly complex.  I think I like this one more…

excerpt from a larger, untitled piece by Tod Hensley

The last of the other’s work is an off-the-cuff, yet totally mind-blowing relaxation sampler by Mrs. Kitty.

Playing with color and texture by Mrs. Kitty

It’s so good, it makes me a little bit angry and full of the awe.  I think a lot of the old-timey samplers are interesting to look at, but would have been dreadfully boring to actually work.  Mrs. Kitty’s piece looks like the most fun way to learn every stitch and also work with color and design.

This is getting long, so I’m going to cut it up into two posts.  Click here for a look at what I’ve been up to lately, craft-wise.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix

Ok, one more post before the needle craft porn, promise!

So, um, I’m in love with this album.  I know, I’m prolly like the last person to hear it.  I’ve, not intentionally, been keeping my finger far from the pulse of “what is happening” in modern music at the moment (more on that later), but better late than never, right?

I downloaded Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix last week and it seems like I’ve been listening to it over and over since then (last.fm tells a different story, but who are you going to believe?).  And when I’m not listening to it, I’m thinking about it.  And when I’m not thinking about it, I’m having imaginary conversations with it…

Anna: Wow, Phoenix, that was SO amazing!  I love that song!

PHX:  Thanks, Anna!  That’s nice of you to say.

Anna: (staring intently) You have pretty eyes, you know.  I like how they’re kind of a brownish greeney blue…like you’re actually made up of four different people.  And your album cover is pretty too.  It’s like The Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb On Me” with a splash of French flag.  So good!  Wait, how do you say it in France? Tres bonn? (laughs)

PHX:  Oui!  And thanks again.  We are, as you know, made up of four different people.  There’s four of us.  In the band.

Anna:  (continues to stare as if in a trance, then wakes) Hmm?  Oh that’s nice.  So anyway, how do you do it, Phoenix?  How do you write those songs?  How did you get so good at making the songs only I like and want to hear all the time?  Did you take a class or  do a weekend seminar or something?

PHX:  (uncomfortable) Um…well, we just started writing, and-

Anna:  (forefinger to her mouth) shhh, please don’t speak, sweet Phoenix.  You’re ruining this…beautiful moment we have together.

(crazy laugh)  Ha ha ha! Remember that time I was knitting and you played “Fences” and I started to cry a little bit?

PHX:  No…

Anna:  And remember when “1901″ was playing and it reminded me of that time I heard “Countdown (Sick for the Big Sun)” on the bus and I was so happy?  We’ve been through a lot, you and I.  Haven’t we, Phoenix?

PHX:  (backing away) I think we’re going to go…now. (runs away)

Anna:  (runs to the door and yells after them) I LOVE YOU!  I can’t stop listening to you! (falls to her knees) I’m nothing without you!  (crying) Please don’t leave me!!!  (screaming) PHOEEEE-NIX! PHOE-NIX!

…yeah, so you should buy it and stuff, and join me in my crazy.

Fresh, hot wonderful from the blog, Early Bird Special

I’m in one of those moods.  I’ve been home sick for the last two days and melancholy, saturnine, lugubrious, and wistful (mostly wistful) for the last 11,680 days…give or take…and super-all-those-adjectives since Friday.

John and I just finished watching (500) Days of Summer and it made me feel ways about things.  I thought it was an ok, not great, movie, but it was inspirational enough for me to be writing about it now in lieu of the post I had planned on the joys of needle craft and the online beauty and wonderment I have recently beheld.  Stay tuned for that.

So, these feelings I’m having are about my life and the way it’s going.  There was a pivotal scene in the movie where the young man decides he’s (spoiler alert) had enough of his dreary, greeting card writing lifestyle and decides to, once and for all and finally, give his dream of architechting architecture a go.  I know, it’s a pretty played-out plot device, but as I was watching, rolling my eyes, I wondered, what would happen if I stopped rolling my eyes for a minute and actually, really tried to follow my dreams?  What would happen if we all did that?

I don’t mean to say we should all quit our jobs, move to Portland, and start an indie love rock band, but what if we found a way to work really hard at the one thing that made us happy?

Why aren’t we doing that, right now?

What are we all afraid of?

Because that’s what it is.  It’s fear.  Fear of…something…is keeping us from opening up that amazing cupcake shop, or going to art school, or spending every single waking moment of every day listening to all the songs we want to hear with the  people we love most in the world.

I’m also not saying that we’re all Emily Dickinson and Georgia O’Keeffe superstars either; most of us are just Annas and Johns and Jennifers and Chris’s and we’re all waiting around for life’s surprise ending.

We may not change the world or get rich with our one passion, but I’ll bet you a breakfast burrito and everything I own that we each have the power to make at least one other person happier.  And if we can do that, then we have a good shot at making two, five, ten, maybe a hundred people happier, if only for a little while.  If you’re able to find a way to combine doing what you love and improving the way we all spend the time we have left, then you win.

I’ve talked a lot recently about how I’m small-stepping my way to these other dreams; but I’m still afraid.

I hate my job.

There, I said it.  I only say that because it’s not for me.  If I was passionate about engineering, every day would be amazing, fulfilling, and rewarding.  But I’m not and it isn’t.  I think I can find a way to limp through it, but I hate lies and that is not a long-term, lie-free solution.  I’m afraid of losing it and being without money and unloved and wholeheartedly committing to the one or two things I actually feel some passion for.  If I put my everything into doing what I love and failed, what would be the point of going on?  I guess the knowledge that I actually, really tried for once would help me pick myself up and learn how to be marginal at a job I didn’t care for.  Maybe that’s good enough?

I don’t know, but I think we all need to spend this year figuring out how to let go and be amazing.

We will cut you.

My dearest Internets,

How are you?  I am fine.  Camp is a lot of fun and I am having the best summer!

Jk, but seriously, Internets, I am fine and most any summer camp (computer, horse, macramé knife-fighting)would be a lot of fun.

I have some links and commentary to share, but I wanted to catch up on those New Year’s resolutions we talked about last time.  How are you doing with yours?  Mine are off to a decent start.  I actually exercised for the first time since surgery yesterday.  It was a short, mega-freezing walk, but it felt good to be outside again.  And I took the bus this morning!  Hooray pub transpo sys! It was hard to wake up on time after so long, but I think this whole bus thing is going to work out, y’know? That’s about all I’ve got so far.  I need to find some way to cata-blog all of these New Year’s achievements…perhaps a Blog, Sweet Blog achievement toteboard? Is that too much? Too crazy?

In other news, I seem to have arrived at a strange confluence of heavy music news and links and I want to share them with you all, of course.

-The Runaways are awesome (and will cut you if you don’t watch it) and they’re making a sort of borderline-horrible movie about them.  I think it’s because I’m getting more old and crotchety by the hour, but I kind of hate the way they cut movie trailers these days.  Like, either they make four different trailers that make a movie seem like it’s a wacky comedy, a crime thriller, a documentary on the British aristocracy, and an adorable romantic comedy.  Or, in the case of this trailer, they make it seem like The Runaways invented polio and then cured it.  They’re certainly important and awesome, but yeesh, enough with the “in a world” gravitas already.

-Yesterday, Little Big John John Johnny Cakes told me about Hideous Gnosis: A Black Metal Theory Symposium and I had thoughts about things.  I replied to him, thusly…

I’m not really sure what to make of the Black Metal Symposium.  My first impulse is, “if academics are studying it, it’s time to get out.”  The academics could just be highly educated fans, but the idea of shining the light on a form of expression that, by its very nature, defies analysis and rejects exposure, seems kind of ridiculous.  And why not other metal subgenres?  There are thematic connections and a great deal of overlap between black metal and doom, death, viking/pagan, etc.  I think the answer is that black metal is really popular right now and has become a shorthand buzzword for people to latch onto.  Speaking of, there’s a documentary coming out about two of the major/most controversial BM artists from Norway.  I heard an interview with the filmmakers, but it left me feeling like people are way too interested in black metal at the moment.

Still, I’m going to read the material on the site and listen to the lectures before I offer a formal, Blog, Sweet Blog opinion.  There’s already been some excellent commentary on the topic here.

I do have one quick comment though.  Phrases like, “Representing textual significance as a plenitude…” put me on the lookout for further academic douchebaggery.  I’m not a liberal-arts academic, but I am somewhat familiar with academic papers on electrical/communications engineering.  Maybe it’s a cultural difference, but it seems like I almost never encounter language like that in the scholarly papers of my field.  It seems like we try to write as simply as possible and let the data and figures speak for themselves.  It seems like I see a lot of overwrought, near-baroque word usage in artist’s statements too and they always make me feel like they’re just having a laugh.  But, as I said, this could be a cultural difference and an encouraged form of academic expression within the liberal arts academic community.

Regardless of my eventual opinion on the merits of the symposium, I think it’s great that outsiders and metal fans are talking about music that I love.

-“Until the Light Takes Us’ is that documentary I was talking about above.  It’s playing at Starz on January 29th, hooray! I listened to an interview with the filmmakers on The Sound of Young America podcast a while ago and, let’s just say, the filmmakers did not inspire me to see their film.  They started off the interview by saying they weren’t fans of black metal and only got into it via the owner of Aquarius Records (a tiny wonder of an amazing record store in San Francisco).  I think that’s +1 to the theory that black metal has attained some unexplained, hipster cachet these days.

That statement also gave me pause because I think the quality of documentaries has really gone down over the past five or ten years.  It seems like I’ve seen a lot of pointless, haphazard documentaries over the past year (We Jam Econo, Helvetica, Beautiful Losers).  I think there are too many documentary filmmakers flooding my movie screens with mediocrity.  I’m going to see the movie, but it seems far from the documentary I was hoping for.

-Also, apparently, there are death metal roosters…

-Deathklok is still really funny/brutal…

-Finally, Colorado had a thriving punk/new-wave scene in the 70′s and 80′s (Wax Trax! started here, y’know) and this site will tell you all about it.

Best wishes and etc., your biggest fan,

Dr. Annabelle Lies

Percy demonstrates the nadir of Victorian Men's athletics, the oft-misunderstood, Single Gentleman's Aquatic Pantomime

Bella Donna thought the end of the previous post was funny because, until I posted this, the link went to a 404 Not Found page and it was as if my resolutions, nay, my very future was missing and unwritten.  If you’ve learned anything about me during our time together, you should have learned that it’s almost obsessively impossible for me to leave anything unwritten…especially my future.  As I was saying…

So, with 2009 safely tucked away into the Blog, Sweet Blog archives, we cast a fresh, hopeful gaze upon our new BFF, the year 2010 (or ’010! à la Stephen Colbert).  Pray, what awesomeness awaits me this year?

Lottery winnings?

The dream of publishing fulfilled?

The end of electrolysis?

A minor, though rather annoying fender bender?

Kitten adoption?

I wish I knew, Internets.  I wish. I knew.

The Future may arrive at any moment and I have composed the following list of 52,384 things I should/want to/must/need to/had better/oughta do until The Future or January Whatever, 2011 gets here.

I realize this may not interest you in the slightest, but I’m going to ignore your unvoiced protestations and put it up anyway.  There are a lot of recurring, overdone themes in a lot of people’s resolutions, but I continue to find value in the resolutions of people I like, admire, and respect.  They’re an insight into a person’s personality and I like to be able to copy some of their goals if I feel like we’re simpatico.  Plus, it’s good to have goals…ugh, isn’t that a quote from some movie?  I just spent too long looking for the source and couldn’t find it.

Anyway, to the resolutions!

In 2009, I resolve to…

get well.

-I’ve been exercising and losing weight pretty steadily for the last couple of years.  I still need to keep at it, but my goal for this year is to get under the weight prerequisite for reassignment surgery.

-This touches some of the other areas, but I need to seriously think about plans for having GRS.  I’m eligible in May and I’d like to cross this off the list before I turn 40.

-I want to buy another bike…either a townie, Dutch-style bike or a three gear cruiser.  I have a mountain bike I like, but it’s not very cute and inspires a much more aggressive riding style (insert fast and hard riding double entendre here).  I’d rather have something that was more comfortable and friendly so I’d be inclined to take longer, more frequent and leisurely rides…like to the store and out to eat with John.

-I want to go hiking again.  I went a lot two years ago and always had a lot of fun.  I’d like to go with John a few times this summer at least.

win at monetizing!

-Who doesn’t want to earn more money?  I mean, really.  I’ve thought about getting another job or finding some way to bring in more money.  I’d like to redecorate and I need about $20,000 for surgery and I’m not saving any money right now. Maybe I could sell some art or crafts on etsy?

-I’d like to refinance or sell my place…at some point.  I wrote about this before.  I’m not looking for some giant Barbie dream house in the suburbs or a penthouse on Peyton place.  No, just a cute, cozy little downtown hideaway near the bus stop.

-Speaking of, me and my homie, Les Bus, need to get reacquainted.  Taking the bus would help me save money and give me some extra time work on some of those 10, 000 projects I resolved to do.

-I need to pay off mah debt and get mah bills current.  I don’t have a lot, but I need to get solvent, y’all.

-There is a whole garage full of bad memories and crappy crap I need to get rid of or sell somehow.  I’ve said it before, but who needs a table saw, really?

nest and nest and nest and nest.

-I got a bonus this year and I decided that I want to use it and my tax return to decorate my place.  My ex and I were trying to sell my place before we broke up, so it’s been like living in Tabula Rasa for two years.  If I can’t move, then having a warm, pretty, welcoming home is good enough for now.  Granted, I have no idea where to start with this and the prospect of decorating failure fills me with a primordial, creeping, Elder gods-esque dread.

-I want to invest in some big girl cooking accoutrement.  I want to get some of the classic cookbooks, a few more pans, and a better set of knives.  After that, watch out foodstuffs!

-As most of the bad memories and crappy crap reside in the garage and laundry room, it stands to reason that I should clean these up.

-It’s not even half as bad as the garage, but I need to clean out the office as well.  It’ll be a perfect studio when I add some nice work spaces, storage, and additional lighting.

say, “what’s up, Art world?”

-I want to participate in the Denver Arts community.  To do that, I should prolly, you know, make some art or something.  So, I’m going to try to finish three(?) short stories and fabric/visual art things.  That number is completely arbitrary, but finishing anything would be a bonus.  Once I have some finished work, I plan on submitting to some literary magazines (in addition to McSweeney’s) and galleries/calls for submissions.

-I might need to join or start a revolutionary, avant-garde commando art action collective…or at least research what’s out there.  There are a number of them in town (not so much commando avant-garde) and I think joining one might be a good way to keep the metaphorical juices flowing.

-I need to get out there and mingle with the Art community, so I wanna go to at least 6 First Fridays (some combination of the Santa Fe, RiNo, and Colfax nights) this year.

-Momma needs to see some more art and that means multiple trips to the MCA, DAM, and at least once more to the Kirkland.

-Since I lost my camera in DC, I should buy another camera and take more pictures of things and stuff for the blog and whatnot.

-There are these things called readers and I’d really like to learn how to get them to look at my li’l blog…and tell their friends.  Perhaps an absurd contest of some sort?

maximize my personal productivity and unleash my power animal!

The rest of these are just general, personal things I want to do and aren’t easily classifiable, hence the title.

-This spring and summer are going to be awesome, I can just feel it!  I resolve to get out more and do the work necessary to insure the awesomeness….like spending time outside going to farmer’s markets and outdoor events.

-I could do with a better weekly schedule, something in between the one I made each semester of college and the one Martha Stewart publishes in her magazine…maybe not as OCD, but it would be nice to have a regular feeling for the things I need to do every week.

-This year has been pretty great, family-wise, but we could be much better.  My mother said she’d like to have us back home for Christmas and that’s a perfect ending point for the year.  Until then, I’ll endeavor to be a better daughter and sister and continue to work on the problems that still exist in my family.

-I love me some food and I feel like I should be trying new restaurants and working on my cooking skills.  I’d like to try six new, highly-rated restaurants and six new recipes…one of which should involve baking.

-Even though my recent tattoo consult didn’t go so well (long story), I still want to get at least one this year.

-Adopt a kitten?  Sadly, my kitty is getting older and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to adopting another kitten or two.  If anyone knows of any free, Scottish Fold kittens, put in a good word for me!

-Go for a nice vacation this year or go back to Burning Man some year.  I went to Burning Man in 2001 and have been pining for the playa ever since.  If not, a vacation to anywhere nice this summer (hopefully with John) would work.

-I really should make a decision about graduate school.  The next deadline is October something, so I have until then.

-And finally, I’d like to figure out how to move to Europe, at least for a while.  The company I work for has branches all over the world, but I’m not sure I could use them to get an engineering job over there.  If I figure out a way to get to Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, or Oslo, I’m so going.

Yeesh, enough with the writing already!  It’s time to get out there and make those resolutions happen!  Do you have any resolutions or hopes for this year you’d like to share?  How are you planning to make this year better than the last?

Margaret demonstrates the low point in Victorian-era Women's athletics, the wildly unpopular, Single-handed Trunk Drag.

I was watching Bram Stoker’s Dracula when I started writing this the other day and I realized, the first five minutes of  that movie are totally metal.

So Happy New Year, y’all.  I realize it’s a little late to do resolutions and wrap-ups (or so says John), but I wasn’t aware of any rules or time limits banning the writing of New Year’s resolutions after January 1st.  I figure, as long as I get something out by the end of January, we’re good.

First, let’s recap the major events of 2009…

-continued basking in the crappy, coming-out aftermath with my parents.

-CAME OUT AT WORK!!!  Seriously, in retrospect, this almost seems like a non-event, but, let me assure you, it was definitely an event.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget the megaWatts of energy expended in sweating worry, HR meetings, legal wrasslin’, and amazing letter writing before the big day, but it was all totally worth it.  It’s hard to believe I’ve been full time for 8 months now.

-drove out see my father in Iowa for July 4th weekend, had a great time.  Also saw the mighty Sunn O)) in the mighty Big O.

-finally realized my cat might be trying to kill me.

-spoke at work conferences in both Washington D.C. and Mobile, AL…I should prolly tell those stories at some point.

-renewed my nuptial vows with my first love, Cheese.

-read some books.

-went back to graduate school, got an A.

-battled King Ghidorah with Godzilla on Japan’s mysterious Monster Island.

-tried internet dating and won.

-made up with my mother and she and my aunt came out to visit.

-had an unplanned gall bladder-ectomy.

-crowned Queen of Donkey Kong.

-won a caption writing contest and got my first professional writing rejection.

Holy wow, that was quite a year, hunh?!  I’ve read how some other bloggers didn’t particularly care for our old friend, 2009, but I thought it was pretty great.  I think my choice to (and following through with) transition helped a lot and waking up from the eight-year long nightmare of the Bush/Cheney regime seemed to lighten up the place considerably.

This is getting long, so let’s take a cheese break and meet back at the next, thrilling New Year’s installment, Viva la Resolutions!

Looking down Denver's 16th St. Mall, New Year's Eve 2009. Photo courtesy of denverpost.com

So, I pretty much had the best New Year’s Eve ever this year!  How about you guys?

Lil Big Johnny John John and I decided to spend the night in downtown Denver.  The were two fireworks displays (one at 9 pm, one at midnight) on the 16th St. Mall and hanging out with a lot of Denver on the street seemed like the perfect way to spend the holiday.  We stayed at a really nice hotel (The Westin) and made reservations at an amazing French retsaurant (BistroVendôme).  The fireworks, hotel, and restaurant were all within four blocks of each other, so we thought we’d check into the hotel early, “watch tv,” go to dinner, see the midnight fireworks show, then head back to the room to “drink tiny bottles of mini bar liquor.”

Dinner was tres bon!  LBJJJ and I had mussels, a potato and leak amuse-bouche, quiche with a tossed spinach salad, squab with chicken sausage and cabbage, and a red wine poached pear stuffed with a Gorgonzola cheese filling.  There were four courses and each was paired with a wonderful wine.

I made the dinner reservation for 10:30 in the hopes that we could have a nice, leisurely dinner then mosey/amble/saunter down to the fireworks.  We got to the restaurant early, but we had to wait for 15 or 20 minutes before a table in the main room opened up, but I so didn’t care.  The night had been going so well up until then and I was trapped in a glowing bubble of perfect night bliss.

We spent the dawn of the new decade (it’s weird to say that, bye 2000′s!) with funny hats and champagne in the restaurant, but again, didn’t care.  No amount of fireworks or crowds could have overshadowed the romantic night we were having.

Actually, we did see fireworks that night.  They shot them off the building right across the street from our hotel room and we watched the whole show from the window while we were “watching tv.”  C’est Magnifique!

After dinner, we went to a nearby bar for a few vodka drinks before the short walk back to the hotel. There were more good times, but I’m going to wrap it up here.  This is a family blog, y’all…use your imagination.

So yeah, Best.New Year’s.ever!  It wasn’t what we’d initially planned, but it turned out to be an extremely memorable, romantic holiday.

In other news, John and I both changed our dating site profiles to “seeing someone” and told Facebook we’re “In a Relationship” with each other.  So, I guess we’re like, official and stuff.  Squeeeeeeeeee!!!

Tune in next post for some wacky, yet obligatory New Year’s resolutions!

Look there! A visual metaphor for my hopes and dreams!

I got my first “professional” writing rejection today.

I sent this to the McSweeney’s Lists site last week and received a very nice rejection email  from the editor a few minutes ago.  I wrote it specifically for the site and I thought it was pretty good…not good enough, apparently.  I would have liked to know why they didn’t use it, but I’m sure editors never do that and the reason is probably “not funny” or “needs punctuation.”  It was my second submission, but I thought the first one was even less funny than this.  Oh well. I’ll keep trying.

So, since this piece has been officially released from the burden of McSweeney’s publication, I offer you…

A survey of alcoholic beverage bottle label motifs which portend certain dire, vomitous consequences for the hapless consumer should she or he choose to ingest intoxicating quantities of said beverage.

The angry sea captain

A werewolf, mummy, or other creature of the night

Two or more dogs, copulating

A clown, mime, or any member of The Insane Clown Posse

Senator Joseph Lieberman

Any currently-serving Supreme Court Justice

A road map

Any farming implement

A winking elf or gnome

A winking monkey, sloth, or porpoise

Anything winking, really

Jesus

*ed.  ok, I guess this isn’t that funny, but I was really happy with it when I emailed it off.  I think I can do better, but trying to write jokes or purposely funny stuff is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Tagged: angry sea captain, bad booze bottle labels, comedy, copulating dogs, gnomes and elves, lists, McSweeney's, porpoise, professional rejection, rejection, senator joseph lieberman, sloth, vomitous, writing ]]> http://annahell.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/on-not-getting-published-by-mcsweeneys/feed/ 1 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/quantifying-lucky-a-trans-dating-numerical-analysis/ http://annahell.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/quantifying-lucky-a-trans-dating-numerical-analysis/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:22:34 +0000 annahell http://annahell.wordpress.com/?p=1394 ]]> Mood: Wubba wubba wubba Music: Carpenters-Superstar!

Therefore, the problem of where I left my sandwich this morning has no solution within the set of complex polynomials and thus, cannot be solved. QED, y'all.

I think I’ve mentioned before how hard it is for us lovely trans-peeps to find El Romance.  The last post and adorable Jamie’s subsequent comment set me to pondering on how truly lucky I am.  It’s easy to forget your good fortune in the grind of life  and I was glad to have the chance to reflect on my happy state of affairs.

After a lot of  fond remembrance and some purring noises, the engineer that lives in my head started asking a bunch of annoying, engineer-y type questions.  How hard was it for me to meet someone, really?  Was it much harder than it is for other, cis-gendered women?  How much harder?  Is there a way to accurately quantify this experience in a rigorous, peer-reviewable fashion?  Have you ever noticed how I start a lot of my blogs with a lot of questions?  What’s up with that?  Is that a persistent trend or just something I’ll tire of in a few months?

Anyway, I’m sure this has been done somewhere else and with more skill and precision, but whatever.  This is my town and I’m just giving the people what they want…numbers and “science”! So, for what it’s worth, I offer you the following analysis and comparison of single Denver trans-girl dating in late 2009.

Approximate US population…308,000,000

If 50% are men…154,000,000

Approximate number of US men aged 25-44 (my dating range)…42,000,000

If 90% of them are straight or bisexual (using the “10% rule”¹)…37,800,000

How many of them live in Colorado (we’re about 7.7% of the US population)?…2,910,600

How many live in the Metro Denver area (about half)?…1,455,300

How many of those guys are “desirable”, e.g. not felons, not sex offenders, not homeless, not certifiably nuts, etc. (assuming 10% “undesirable”¹) ?…1,440,747

How many of those guys would date a transsexual (I have no idea, maybe 1 in 50¹)?…28,815

How many of those guys are the kind of guy who reads books, listens to good music, likes Art, is employed, doesn’t live at home, tolerates cats, isn’t a Republican, makes me laugh, is intelligent, isn’t into domestic violence, knows something about politics and current events, isn’t addicted to sports or Internet porn, isn’t already married/in a relationship/polyamorous, isn’t an alcoholic or drug addict, doesn’t drive a Hummer or monster truck, doesn’t like NASCAR, doesn’t care if I have tattoos, thinks I’m cute, and can take me out and buy me dinner every once in a while (ummm, 1 in 50 maybe¹)?…576

Chance I’ll meet one of these perfect guys on the streets of Denver? about 1 in 2500

Chance a cis-gendered woman with low standards will meet a guy on the streets of Denver? about 1 in 1

Chance a choosy, cis-gendered woman will meet a guy on the streets of Denver? 1 in 50

¹The data provided in these instances is a best-guess estimate, has not been verified, and should not be used as a basis for further academic research.  However, the author encourages ongoing, detailed collection of demographic data in the hopes that such data may one day support the suppositions contained herein.

To put it another way, it’s roughly two orders of magnitude or 50 times more difficult for me to find a suitable suitor compared to a straight, non-transsexual woman of Denver.  Yeesh, when you think about the odds, it almost seems like it’s not worth the bother.  Just kidding!  It’s all totally worth it and I highly recommend it.

So yeah, I’m lucky and I know it, clap your hands.  If you’re with someone, you should clap your hands as well.  If you’re not with someone and you want to be, go out there and find them!  The numbers say it’s far from impossible and not even as remote as winning the lottery or dying in a plane crash.  Chances are, you’re amazing and deserving of love and happiness, so go out there and get it!

Happa-happy Holidays!

p.s. For the record, I don’t believe that luck is a real thing.  However, I do believe that people can put themselves into a positive frame of mind where “lucky” things seem to happen…which is even better.

Heavy Metal Santa rewards the good and punishes (murders) the wicked.

Hey Internets!  It’s me, Anna!

So, I think I’ve watched almost every Lifetime, Hallmark, and TMC Christmas movie this year and I’ve just about reached my breaking point.  Yep, I’m one or two more Whoopi Goldberg or Jenny McCarthy made-for-TV movies away from dropping a Christmas miracle of an unending stream of F-bombs.  I’d better take it easy, there are still four days left until the big day.

I’m finally done with my Christmas shopping and mostly done with the wrapping, but there’s nothing I can do about this raging case of gift dread.  I like to joke that my interest in a person’s gift ends as soon as I put it in their hands, but that’s just me, talking tough.  The embarrassing truth is that I’m gnashing my teeth and wringing my hands with the worry for hours after.

I feel like I’m smart and creative enough to be an amazing gift-giver.  Every new Christmas is a chance for redemption, but I feel like I rarely live up to my own expectations.  Did I spend enough?  Did I spend too much?  Are my gifts too impersonal?  Too weird?  Why didn’t I buy anything from etsy.com or make anything by hand?  Why did I buy my mother a Princess Leia action figure?  Why do I suck at this? Will they like it?  Is my sucky gift a thinly veiled condemnation of the recipient and her/his abhorrent “lifestyle” choices?  Do I harbor a secret, burning hatred for my friends and family?   See what it’s like to be in my head, Internets?!  It’s like a desert filled with billions of jagged, thorny questions all begging to be answered right now.  Then again, it’s also like a little town populated by cats that speak with a British accent and wear clothes and have cat jobs and little gardens.

I’ll do better next year, promise.  I think I’ll make a viva la resolution list later, but I’m really going to try to make some crafty gifts or at least put a lot more thought into them next year.

Holy wow, Brittany Murphy died yesterday.  She was 32.  I had watched and really enjoyed a few of her older movies (esp. Ramen Girl and Love and Other Disasters) this year and I was excited to see what she’d do next.  She was a nice mix of cute, funny, tough, sweet and smart and it’s too bad she had to leave so soon.  Sorry to end on a sad note, but I just heard about it.

I hope you all are having a super great holiday season!

Love and xo, your biggest fan,

Anna

Unicorn: Destroyer of Ponies! by Devin McGrath

One of the unintentional themes of my blog is that I hardly ever follow up on, or finish, any of my stories.  You may have noticed that I love to tease new ideas at the end of a lot of my blog posts, but I rarely come back to them.  Sorry, but I can’t really help it.  It’s like I get bored of the idea as soon as I type the words.  I don’t mean to, Internets and I realize that some sort of narrative thread is a good thing/piques people’s interest (although sweet unicorn art doesn’t hurt, am I right, people?).  In the spirit of turning that around, I offer you the following, vague update on my love life and maybe the metaphorical tying up of other, personal loose ends.

So, if you’ll recall (remember this and this?), the results of Internet Dating Sesh 1.0 were fail.  Internet Dating Sesh 2.0 has been going a lot better and by better, I mean I actually met someone…a guy someone!  …a real, human guy someone!  I’m not going to go into a lot of detail because I’m a firm believer in “personal privacy.”  Also, he reads mah blog and I’d rather not drag him into my unfettered, Innertubes fantasy world and then have to explain my crazy later on when I see him.  “Anna, why did you describe last night’s date as elfin magic?” See, Internets? It could get complicated.  So, I reserve the right to make vague, occasional references to him and the things we do, but it’s not going to be any kind of a regular Blog, Sweet Blog feature.

His name…ok, his nom de guerre, is John.  He’s a little older than me, a little bit taller, and he makes a good living at Internetting.  We’ve been seeing each other at least weekly since our first date on October 15th.  Holy elfin magic, we’ve been dating for two months! Amway, dating is hard, you guys, even under the best of circumstances.  I don’t think I’ve done the analysis for you, but it’s kind of a mega-long-shot for trans people to find someone who makes them happy.  We’re not a perfect couple by any means, and we still have some things to figure out, but I like John and he makes me happy.  It’s way too soon to speculate on the future and our roles in each other’s stories, but for now, we’re definitely dating   Oooh, maybe I should change my dating profile to “seeing someone“?  Or maybe there’s a setting for…”Fuck off losers!  I hate you all and I’m off the market so stick it in your cram holes.  Have fun being single and alone and crying all the time, nerds.  Also, suck it.” That may be a tad wordy/curse-y, but them’s my feelings, y’all.

We went to dinner and a movie on Saturday and it was a good news/bad news kind of night.  The good news is that I had a wonderful time and the Moscow Mule (with fresh ginger, cucumber, and lime)  is my new favorite drink.  The bad news is that Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is not a good date movie and it haunted John all the way home.  If your lady friend suggests seeing it, you should politely suggest a more upbeat alternative.  Perhaps a holiday movie with one of those young people everyone is always talking about or some cute li’l animals?  I lobbied hard to see it (yes, I am a weird girl) and I thought it was a good movie, but yeesh…welcome to Bleaksville.  I can’t wait to read the book!

K, so that’s enough about me and my sickeningly sweet, RomCom of a life.  What else is new?  Well, funny you should ask…I’m getting a new tattoo! I’ve thought about this for a long time now.  I have one tattoo on my arm and I got it when I was 18.  I always wanted to get more (or get the old one removed), but I held off for some reason.  I think I was hoping I would eventually transition and I didn’t want to have a bunch of gnarly, dude tattoos all over the place.  I think I’m ready to continue on with the ambitions of my youth.  I’ll post some art or pictures when I have them, but it’s going to be something about Odin’s two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, but cuter and it’ll be somewhere on my frontspiece…like where the arm meets the chest, one on each side.

I want to have Sandi Calistro do it.  I sent her an embarrassingly-detailed description (they should be about two inches high, not realistic, stylized, but not tribal, mostly black, but with some color, they should each be clutching something like ribbon, but they should both be different, etc. Ugh, even I think I’m bossy.) a few days ago.  Update! I just called her and we made an appointment for a consultation next Tuesday, but her tattoo appointments are booked until like, March.  That  sucks.  I was hoping to get it much sooner than that, but that must mean she’s really good.

Hmm, I thought I had a lot more to wrap up than this.  Oh, my grad school class ended last week.  I never wrote about it again because it was slap-yourself-in-the-face-with-a-shovel boring.  The team project was good (we did a project notebook for a tech startup), but the lectures were not worth the 15 minute walk to campus.  So, I skipped class all the time and turned in a bunch of last-minute genius every week before the start of class.  I got an A but I didn’t collect any amusing class anecdotes.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about graduate school.  I took this class for credit as a non-degree graduate student.  It would count toward a major if I could ever decide on one, but I can’t.  I could do a Master’s in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering, or get an MBA or Engineering Management degree, but those all sound about as appealing drinking hot wax, over and over again.  Applications for next Spring are due in January, but I don’t feel like finishing one.  Honestly, you guys, the only thing that interests me right now is something in the Arts and there’s a 99% chance of no way my workplace would pay for that.  So, I’m stuck and thinking about what to do/not do next.

Fuck, this is long, sorry.  Re: McSweeney’s, I would love to post all of the hilarious stuff I’m submitting to them, but I should wait until it ever/never gets published.  Oh well, if something gets rejected, I’ll post it here, promise.  Other than all those words about the things, stuff is awesome, I’m très heureux, and loving the Christmas and whatnot.

K, that’s it, for reals…tune in next time for exciting tales of excitement and me not recapping the things I ought to!

Happy holidays!

Perhaps you’ve heard of a little, genius, and at times, ridiculously funny Internet and print publishing venture known as McSweeney’s? If you haven’t, for shame, Internets, really.  Please click the following links to increase your knowledge of “actual post-modernism at its finest” and let’s not let this sort of thing happen again, hmm?

The McSweeney’s Wikipedia page

The Official McSweeney’s site

A page about LOLcats

Anyway, McSweeney’s, love.  I’m no expert on English literature or literary journals, but McSweeney’s is the sort of literary journal a girl like me can really get behind, you know?  It has amazing writing, great art, interesting topics and guests, and it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously….which is like the literary equivalent of turning lead into gold…because it’s so hard…since they’re always so serious and stuff.

I think I first heard of the site around 2004.  This is one of the first things I read…

…and it still makes me laugh, every time.  They’re all good, but I think the last one is my favorite…apery!

The other day, I decided that I want to become a published by McSweeney’s author, either by the Internet site or the journal.  I’m funny…ok, amusing, at least…and the writing on the site is exactly the sort of writing I’m interested in.  I studied the website submission guidelines (small steps, y’all) and had a look at Blog, Sweet Blog‘s back catalog.  You know what?  I do not write like a person who writes for McSweeney’s, at all!  Nope, not even a little bit.  I think I could, maybe, but I’m going to have to start from scratch.  Besides, I have it on good authority that they will not accept “previously published” works, and that includes anything I’ve posted to my blog.  Nevermind.

So, I guess I’m trying to say I’m working on some pieces to submit to McSweeney’s.  The website doesn’t pay anything and I’m not really doing this so I can lord it over all of you (just watch though, I’m totally going to lord it over all of you if I get a book published).  No, this goes back to something someone said to me some time.  I can’t recall any of the details, but I do remember this quote:

“If you want people to see/love your work, you should submit it to places and show it to people.”

Those are wise words, Anonymous Stranger and I’m trying to follow your advice.  As usual, I’ll let you all know if something happens.

Happy Holidays!

p.s. yes, that’s supposed to be falling snow on the site.  It’s not an eye seizure.

So, the other day, I got a comment on my Hott Guyz, Y’all post.  It went something like…

From your list, Noel Fielding takes a & b, hands down. But if we’re talking rock bands & messy hair, I’d say Nikki Sixx is a fairly serious omission.

To which I replied…

I stand by my initial choices (mmm, Russell Brand…the things we could do to each other), but after having seen three seasons of The Mighty Boosh, Noel Fielding does seem like the perfect combination of messy-haired sex god and committed, sensitive, life partner.

Regarding Mr. Sixx, let me begin by saying, “brava, Mrs. Bones. I like your style.” He is still pretty good-looking, but I’m not really a fan. I stopped listening to Mötley Crüe after Shout at the Devil and I lost interest soon after. Still though, as far as messy-haired, sexy rockers go, he’s gotta be in the top five.

Mrs. Bones really got me thinking, though.  Who are these Hott Rocks Guyz, y’all?  What are the qualities I look for in a hott rocks guy(z)?  Is it strictly messy hair or can a talented, sensitive songwriter/musician also get into my pants?  What’s the deal with all the rocking out with the cock out?  Is there an age limit?  Are there any Hott Rocks Girlz that would make the list?  Will Nikki Sixx remain in the top five?  Do any of you understand that I’m referring to my favorite Sleater-Kinney album (The Hot Rock) when I use the term, “hott rocks guyz”?

I suppose you do now, but seriously, it’s a great album…really.  Go buy it from a “record” store or download a digital copy from wherever it is the kids are doing that sort of thing nowadays with the computers and whatnot. Amway, the answers to these questions may surprise you/be found a little bit below this sentence.

I gave this all a lot of thought and put these questions to my friend Wendy one late night after a super succesful shopping excursion.  Which Hott Rocks Guyz would you  do it with? Who would never make the list?  Are there any second-tier Rock Guyz that you might take pity on at the end of the night (see Mayhaps)? Hours later, we had the perfect, exhaustive list of music/artist type-people we’d totally “do it” with.  These aren’t in any particular order and I’ve provided the band names for some of the Guyz if they seem obscure.  I wish I could find pictures of all these guys, but that would take a few minutes less than forever and I have a job and a life and stuff.  Just take my word for it.  There were a few disagreements and those have been italicized for your reading pleasure.  Annotated commentary is provided as appropriate.  As always, comments are appreciated/encouraged.

To the list!

======================================================

1 yep, all of ‘em

2 Wendy says he’s really short, but in the fantasy world where I actually sleep with Danzig, he’s like, 6’1″.

3 At the same time, maybe?

4 I can’t remember which of us passed on Kurt…I’m ambivalent.

5 No, I don’t care that Morrissey is, supposedly, asexual.

6 OK, I realize that Lemmy is just about the ugliest man in rock and roll, but I feel like I owe him…something.  Maybe I should just make him dinner or knit him a rock…thing?

7 I still kind of have a problem with hair metal. I spent the hair metal years as an angry, skate punk and it’s still hard for me to forgive and forget when it comes to that particular sub-genre. Still though, they both have the Nikki Sixx moppy, messy black hair thing going on.

8 Trend alert!  I have a thing for tall, raven-haired, pale rockers.

9 Ew, no way.  Wendy’s position is that he prolly made up for his unfortunate lips and teeth with expert cocksmanship.  To me, it matters not, still ew.

10 A crush so old, it’s positively developmental.

11 Well worn territory.

12 LOL, this should be its own post.  We started off talking about rock crushes, but veered into hip hop after someone dropped an LL Cool J.  I was trying to think of some other good-looking rappers, and I blurted out “Lil John!”  Wendy countered that no one is sure what he looks like because he’s always wearing huge sunglasses, mouth jewelry, and a baseball cap.  But still, he made us laugh so hard, he’s staying on the list.

13 Admittedly, Los Beatles did not immediately spring to our minds, too old.  However, at the end of the night, we placed them in order, as you do…Paul, George, John, and Ringo.

14 I think I was pro and Wendy was con.  He’s a weird-looking guy to be sure, but anyone that has written “Gimme Danger” and slept with David Bowie is ok by me.

15 This is kind of a Lemmy thing again, but he’s the cutest Melvin.

16 I’d have to go back to Throbbing Gristle-era Genesis.  He’s mostly female now and has had more genital piercings than any sane person should.

17 Yes, I know he’s gay.

18 Wendy says he looks weird.  I say any man that’s good enough for Beyoncé is good enough for me.

19 I’m against, Wendy’s for.  I love his music, but there are better looking, goth-y singers.

20 I’m against, Wendy’s for.  Even though he fits 8, I’m not really a fan.

21 After we make love, he could sing a medley of “Ghost Town”, “Nightclub”, and “Things Could Be Beautiful”!

22 I think it’s the eye patch.

23 Maybe the Gary Oldman version.

24 Wendy said he’s an asshole too.

25 The reason I’m against is because I saw the Red Hot CHili Peppers at The Ranch Bowl (live music + bowling!) in Omaha when they toured in support of The Uplift MoFo Party Plan.  It was a great show, but I distinctly remember the goobery snot and boogers around Flea’s mouth area during the show.  It’s like he entered some sort of idiot savant zone and his brain temporarily traded an interest in personal hygiene for amazing bass playing.  His boogers haunt me to this day.

26 I LOVE this band, but there is no way I would ever sleep with any of them.  Greg Norton was the best looking of the bunch, but that giant moustache made him look more like a Tom of Finland model than a gentleman a straight woman should “spend time with.”

27 You know what, Internets?  Fuck Social Distortion, fuck Mike Ness, and fuck you if you like them.  This band is/was about as punk as The Starland Vocal Band and all the people out there that claim them as some sort of punker than thou link to their youth are nothing but first degree posers.  I’m so sick of people claiming them like they were the only/best punk band to make it out of the 80′s.  If you like them…really like them, then we can’t be friends.  Sorry.  Also mega-dumb: Jimmy Buffett and Dave Matthews Band.

28 It’s too bad really.  If he would have just kept his German yap shut about file sharing and music piracy, he could have had a shot with me.

29 Ok, these days, whenever I think of David Lee Roth or 80′s hair metal, the only thing that comes to mind is Dr. Roxo, the rock and roll clown, and his music video.

30 We had a long talk about this one.  Slash could be a good-looking guy if he took a shower, put on a shirt, stopped dangling that one cigarette out of his mouth, washed his hair, stopped wearing that big, dumb top hat, and put down his guitar for like, one day.

31 Under the right circumstances (booze, drugs, Christmas, peace in the Middle East), his talent outweighs his physical limitations.

It’s been a while since I posted some art…too long, I think.

A special fella took me to that Barnaby Furnas exhibition at the MCA a week or two before I got sick and it was a-mazing. I literally got weak in the knees and swooned a little bit in front of the main painting (the one that looks like Flood, might be Flood).  It was gigantic (like 15 feet tall x 20 feet across), and violent and sickly beautiful.  Honestly, I could have stared at it for another two hours.  There were two other really good ones, as well.  I still might go back for some more slack-jawed, awe gazing before it closes.

So anyway, too long without art…I think my recent hospital stay and the thrilling end of my grad school class this week both contributed to moving my finger farther from the pulse of arts on the webs.  In other words, I haven’t been keeping up on the art blogs and I haven’t randomly stumbled across any pieces I immediately fell in love with. So, today’s post is kind of a grab bag of pieces I found over the last hour.  They’re all good and worthy of blog space, but I kind of felt compelled to find something to fill the page.  And if you’ve noticed, I keep trying to branch out and share new styles.  I love pop surrealism and cutesy, brightly colored anything, but I feel one-note if that’s all I ever post.  I hope you appreciate the variety

Anyway…

Zombie Bank by Wendy White

Track by Wendy White

The two above are amazing.  It took me about 30 seconds  to move from dismissive to captivated.  It’s like they’re alluding to being reminiscent of graffiti and cheap spray paint…they’re so good, it’s sickening.  I love it when artists post their pieces to a website chronologically; you can see how they’ve developed their style and where they might be going.  If you look at Wendy White’s earlier pieces on her site (click one of the paintings), it’s clear that she’s reached a point where she has mastered this particular aesthetic.  <3 <3 <3!

PAGES 34 AND 35 by Manfred Aescher

Same with this one above, go to his site and look at the series for a while.

Flashlight by Allison Grant

The Old Quarry by Justin McAllister

you first by Beau Chamberlain

21st Century boys & girls golden mountain by SSIN

So, I had my gall bladder removed on Friday the 13th.

See? I’m not making this stuff up, you guys.  My life is as dramatic and exciting as my blog makes it out to be.  Now if I could just figure out how to channel that excitement into more of a jet-setting, wealth-building, award-winning sort of direction.

I was going to do a giant, excruciatingly detailed, daily account of the preceding illness and subsequent surgery, but I don’t really have it in me anymore.  Maybe it’s the pain pills talking?  Maybe this is my body’s reaction to a new, gall free existence?  Perhaps my “brush” with “death” has made me reorganize the priorities of my life/blog?  Ah, so many questions…

Anyway, the short version is that I started getting really sick that Wednesday (Veteran’s Day).  It felt like I had a bad stomach ache that wouldn’t go away and I was nauseous and feverish.  I wasn’t feeling any better on Thursday and had developed a pain in the right side of my abdomen, just below my ribs.  So, I made an appointment with my doctor.

The doctor told me there was something wrong with my gall bladder and that I needed to go to the emergency room to have an ultrasound.  Wendy drove me to Rose Medical Center (wonderful hospital btw, everyone was super nice and professional) and I got an ultrasound, some excellent, intravenous pain medication, and admitted to the hospital just before midnight. I had surgery at noon the next day.

I was supposed to have a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, but the surgeon switched to an open cholecystectomy (meaning, they cut open my abdomen the old-fashioned way) when he discovered that my bladder de gall was gangrenous, full of stones, and falling apart.  I stayed at the hospital for three more days and I’ve been home ever since.

I’m fine now, thanks for asking.  I had my staples out last Friday and I feel about 75% of normal.  But abdominal surgery isn’t something I recommend for, you know, kicks and stuff.  I’m glad they were able to take out my accursed gall bladder without incident, but I’ll not darken their door again…if I can help it.

The doctor said I could go back to work this week, but I decided to take the rest of it off.  We have a short work week due to the Thanksgiving holiday and I don’t feel great about a long commute in my delicate condition.  So, I’ll be back to work on the 30th.

Wowser, that wasn’t shorter at all, sorry.  So, what else is new?  Um, my Mom and Aunt’s visit went really well.  I have more to say about it, but I’m getting really sick of writing.  Stay tuned.  Also upcoming: a list of rock guys Wendy and I would totally do it with and how I started dating Lil John, sort of.

I hate to push my part of the novel out of the way and off the radar, but I feel duty-bound to share this with you, weary reader.  I’m sure it’s been around for a while, but I just saw it today.  So shut up.

Ladies and Gentleman, I offer you the following, new favorite website…

Glamourpuss:  The Enchanting World of Kitty Wigs

I think the included, "I want a pony!" caption says it all.

<3 <3 <3

Dear Fiction Lovers,

As promised, moments ago, here is the second part (Part 1 can be found here) of our thrilling, though as-yet unnamed collaborative novel on downsizing, outsourcing, and the cruelty of youth.  I hope you like it.

Sincerely, your biggest fan, etc.

Anna

—————————————————————————————-

Allison automatically flopped out of bed at half-past seven in the morning.  She stumbled and weaved her way through a field of dirty clothes to the bathroom toilet and threw up.  She recounted the story of last night in the tea leaves of the toilet. Date. Brad. Señor Verde’s. Chile rellenos. Margaritas.  Small talk. Jobs.  What are we doing? Cry. Cab. Wine. Sex. Cry. Hangover.

“Fuck.” Allison unfurled a wad of toilet paper from the roll and blew her nose into it.  “Maybe I’m getting too old for this?”

She stood, gracelessly, and walked over to the sink.  The bathroom mirror reflected a red-eyed, pale, hung-over, but pretty brunette in her late 20’s.

“I don’t know.  Is 32 old?”  She asked the sobering drunk in the mirror who kept pulling at and stretching her face.  “You don’t look 32.  You could still pass for…”  She squinted her eyes tight and cocked her head to the side.  “…28?”  She slapped the underside of her chin a couple of times and practiced saying her assumed age.  “Twenty eight… I am 28…TWENty eight …Twunee ATE…TwenTEE ATE-ee…maybe even 27?”

She smiled and playfully, arched her left eyebrow, and pointed a finger gun at the mirror.  “Yeah, that’s right…you’re Allison Fucking Haley and you’re young, popular and sex-.“

Allison Fucking Haley took one last, pitying look at the pretty drunk girl in the mirror before retching the last of last night into the sink.

A glassful of Anti-throwupy Seltzer whatever (Allison had a rare, but powerful immunity to branding) and a super-hot shower later, she was busy playing Fashion Show.

Fashion Show was Allison’s term for her borderline psychotic trying-on of everything in her closet (and on her floor).  It usually only manifested itself on the bad days, when she felt nervous or hated the sight of the girl in the mirror.  Most women try on a few outfits before leaving the house.  The smart ones plan out their outfits for the week on Sunday night.  Allison wasn’t a plan-ahead sort of girl, but she rarely had a problem with deciding what to wear.  If she hadn’t decided on something within the first fifteen or twenty minutes, she was playing Fashion Show.

Allison had been playing Fashion Show a lot lately.  She’d already been at it for 45 minutes and was in the middle of taking off a flouncy, long, gray blouse, blood red cardigan, black tights, and knee high boots combination she liked to call Bohemian Rhapsody #3 on good days.  Today she called it, “too Bohemian.”

“I’m going to get fired.  I’m going to get fired. I’m going to get fired.”

The blouse Allison had been pulling over her head suddenly snagged on something and stopped moving, trapping her inside.  “And then I’ll be homeless…” She pulled at the back of the blouse with both hands and heard a faint, ripping sound.  “…and I’ll have to sell drugs.” She unhooked her favorite black bra from outside of the shirt, freed the blouse, pulled it and the blouse over her head, “…and give out hand jobs for hobo chili”, and threw both of them on the ground.”

“Ugh, forget this.”  She slipped a pair of midnight blue, skinny jeans from one of the closet hangers and pulled them on.

“Yassmen is going to walk into the art department today and fire people on sight.”  Allison did her best impression of Yeseam Yassmen’s icy-weird, snobby Southern drawl for the empty bedroom. “You there, young man with the glasses…and you, weird girl…”  Allison plucked a baby blue, Mates of State t-shirt from the floor and put it on.  “…please collect your sad things and bric-a-brac and take them outside.”

She grabbed a vintage, green angora cardigan from the back of her desk chair and stepped into a pair of pewter-colored, metallic flats.  She walked to the full-length mirror in the corner of her bedroom and took a last, quick look before walking into the kitchen.

The clock on the microwave was a welcome sight.  “8:45. Ok, not bad.  I’m going to be late, but not late late.”  She put on her sunglasses and a scarf, put her keys into her mini-messenger bag, and walked out into the stairway of her building.

Allison speed-dialed Jacob the moment she stepped out of the apartment building.

“Good morning, sexy”

“Why Allison Haley, it’s been ages since last night.  How are you?”

“Hung over, a little sad, stressed out.”

Jacob made that annoying tut-tut sound.  “Sorry to hear that, dear.  Are you calling in sick?”

Allison snorted, “Are you kidding?  That’s like begging to get laid off.  I’d rather leave Clearwater the old fashioned way…through random, brutal downsizing.  No, but I’m going to be a teensy bit late.  Would you be my favorite boy in the world and cover for me if anything should, you know, come up?”  She crossed the street to the coffee cart near the downtown bus stop and gestured her way through a large coffee purchase while Jacob spoke.

“Dangit Allison, I can’t.  I have a meeting at 9:30 and you’d better be here before it’s over.  You know how it’s been around here lately…like the Great Purge but without all the nice Stalin.”

“Crap.”  Allison added a large amount of half and half and brown sugar to her coffee and stirred it.  She leafed through her mental employee directory for another patsy.  No one else came up.  “You know Alan got fired, right?”

Jacob repeated the name a couple of times out loud as if that alone would transfer Alan from forgotten to remembered. “Alan…Alan.  Who’s Alan again?”

She made her way to the line of commuters at the bus stop.  “Alan Lambert…from Accounting?  Nice guy…big chin…he helped you move last summer.”

“No way!  The Chin got fired?  He seemed like a lifer.”

“I know, right?  He’d been there for 15 years.  It’s like the worst lottery ever.”

“Totally.”

“Wanna know the really fucked up part?

“Go on…”

The downtown bus stopped at the curb.  Allison stepped on, showed the driver her Eco-Pass, and found a seat.  “Yassmen didn’t even have a meeting with him or bring HR down.  Someone called his house and left a message…”

“Nuh-unh, really?”

“…with his seven year-old daughter!”  In a deeper voice, she joked, “…and when your Daddy gets home, tell him he doesn’t have a job any more.”

“Wow, that’s some evil shit right there.  I’m pretty sure Yassmen is the Devil, Allison.  She’s gotta be.  It’s like she runs on human misery.”

Allison drained the last of her coffee.  “Yup.”

“Wait, how do you know so much about The Chin’s home life?”

“Jen told me.  She’s keeping track of them all…like a modern Domesday book for corporate deaths.  You should check out her scrapbook.  It’s sick, but kind of…beautiful, in a way.  She’s doing a website too.”

“You two are weird.”

“Oh,and you’re not?  I’ve seen your apartment, Jacob.  The Sailor Moon is getting to be a bit, how do you say, creep-a-roo?”

“Hey, manga and anime are very well respected-“

Allison cut him off.  “I don’t have time for your nerd babble, Jacob.  I’m already late for work and I’ve already heard this, numerous times.”

She sighed and watched the passing buildings of downtown KC, her adopted home.  It was early autumn, her favorite time of year, but the street trees still thought it was summer.  It had been three autumns since she left art school and she hadn’t yet gotten the hang of the whole day job, “career” thing.  It had been getting better, but the layoffs and constant threat of downsizing had a way of arresting her development.  She’d spent three months of Saturdays looking for another job in a publishing house art department.  There didn’t seem to be any jobs like that left in the city.  Unfortunately, the drama at Clearwater was being played out on stages all over town.

Jacob was talking again. “What’s that?”

“I said, don’t be hurtful, Allison.”

“Ugh!  Are you coming to my show tonight, or what?”

“What’s this now?  What show?”

“Don’t even.  I told you about this, weeks ago.  The collective’s semi-annual…tonight…at Le Space…my pictures…remember?  You said you’d come!”

“Oh, right…that adorable little hobby of yours.  Are you showing the photos with the little kittens and the ice cream in the bathtub…”

“No, head trauma…” an elderly woman turned toward Allison and frowned disapprovingly.  Allison frowned back then turned the other way in her seat.  “…that was last time, and it was called, Kitten Me Softly.  This is the new one…with the bathroom graffiti?”

In a bad, French accent, Jacob answered. “Oui, but of course I vill be zer, Mees Arbus.”  Jacob dropped it.  “I’ll even wear a jacket.”

Allison tried a sultry purr, “Mmm, you know just what I like, don’t you Daddy?” and then it was gone.  “Oh!   And come early.  And bring some wine.  Do you have any raw meat?”

“What?!  No.  Why?”

“Violet Strange is doing a show next door at midnight.  It’s new…something about her father, the Moon, and menstrual cycles.  She said she needed more raw meat.”  Allison signaled for her stop.

“Gross. I hate performance art.  And no, I don’t have any raw meat to spare…for that.”

“Oh, don’t be that way.  I like Violet and I’m just trying to help her out.  K, sooo…you, Le Space, seven o’clock, sexy jacket, cheap wine,…”  Allison flashed back to the dream publishing job she used to love and the grim warzone her workplace had become.  “Oh, and try not to get fired today, ok?  Kisses!”

The bus pulled up to the curb two blocks east of 3M (or Mini Monkey Monolith on account of it looks just like a squatter version of the featureless, obsidian, ape magnet in 2001: A Space Odyssey) or, as it was more commonly known, Clearwater Publishing Plaza.

Jacob replied, “you’re one to talk Latey McLately.  See you soon.”, then hung up.

Allison put away her phone and hurried the rest of the way from the bus stop to her cubicle.

Dear Fiction Lovers,

Holy crap.  I know I said we’d start this NaNoWriMo project near the beginning of the month and here it is the 10th already.  Still, better late than never, right? Right?

We’ve already had some problems.  Two people dropped off the team and I’ve had a hard time finishing my first part.  The lovely Miss Rebecca Ruhlman put up her part a while ago, but it’s going to be a little bit harder for us to finish since there are only two of us.  Don’t worry Internets, we’ll make it work.

As I said before, the as-yet unnamed story is about young, media types dealing with downsizing and outsourcing at a large publishing company.  Part 1 can be found here. Come back in a few minutes for my part, Part 2.  Oh, and since this is the first sort of collab novel I’ve ever done, go easy on us, ok?  I appreciate constructive criticism, but it might take us a few iterations to work out the continuity issues and plot bugs.  Bear with us, but feel free to comment.

Love,

Anna

*ed.  I’ve already written this blog, but lost the whole thing because I forgot to log in.  The first version was awesome, but I can’t remember it.  Sorry if this one isn’t as good, Internets. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Ugh, I’ve been feeling so off for the last month or two.  It’s not really a depressed kind of thing (or maybe it is), but it’s been really hard for me to generate interest for anything beyond bathing, watching television, writing emails, blogging, feeding the cat, and doing homework.  I’m constantly late to work.  I haven’t been eating much.  My sleep pattern is more of a random process and the mail is unopened, my house is unclean, and my to-do list is undone.  I’m not sure why I’m feeling Maybe it’s because my mother and my aunt are flying out here on Friday.

It’s hard to believe that it has been almost  a year since I came out to my family and friends.  For the most part, people have been sweet and accommodating…my mother is an exception.  She lives out-of-state and she’s had a very hard time with this.  Since coming out, we’ve only spoken on the phone once about ten months ago and traded a very few, terse emails.

I’ve tried every trick I could think of to bring her around.  I’ve sent her the sweet, “it’s no big deal, I’ll wait” email, the pleading, “why don’t you love me?” email, and the angry, “screw you, I’m better off without you” email.  Nothing seemed to work.

The last time I tried one of my special emails, she sent me a reply that said she was still trying to come to terms with this. She told me she’d tried counseling and asked how she could see my YouTube videos. Heartened by the sudden turn for the better, I sent her video instructions and encouragement. Weeks went by without another word.

She called my sister at some point. From what my sister said, it was almost as if she’d gone backwards in her progress and acceptance of me. My mother was all, “have you talked to your brother lately?” and “how is he doing?” It was beyond infuriating and I felt angry, sad, and powerless…again.

Unless you’ve gone through this, it might be hard to understand how this all feels. I still had a mother, theoretically, but she didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me and, try as I might, there was nothing I could do to make her feel differently.  And it’s not like I suddenly became a Nazi or a pedophile. This is a recognized medical condition, she’s a nurse, and this isn’t totally without precedent in my life. I’m still a college graduate, and an electrical engineer, and good at my job, and a tax payer, and a voter, and I have friends, and I’ve never been convicted of anything more serious than a traffic misdemeanor.  I’m also an adult and I have lived a great deal of my life without having to rely on my parents for money or esteem-boosting.  Still though, it’s an awful feeling to be shunned by anyone, especially a parent.

My sister and I came up with one last idea.  I would send her a copy of True Selves along with a positively frigid, “this is your last chance” email and wait for her response.  I sent the email and book about a month ago.  Four days later, she sent me an email saying she had read the book in one sitting and was planning to come out to see my sister and I some time soon.  A week or so after that, she sent me another letter saying that she had purchased two airline tickets and wanted to know who was going to pick them up from the airport.  Apparently, True Selves is a magical tome forged from unicorn tears and fairy wings under the light of a pregnant moon.

So yeah, I’m nervous and excited.

I’m excited because I actually miss my mother and I desperately want her to be a part of my life.   I may have discussed this before, but my childhood was…different.  My parents divorced when I was seven and my little sister and I spent most of our childhood moving between parents and states and addresses, usually once every year or two.  As the eldest, I’ve always felt like the peacemaker, the caretaker and I’ve never been happy with my family’s cool indifference toward each other.  We barely talk to each other and, when we do, it’s usually through gritted teeth and pursed lips.  The half-closed mouth is a guard against accidentally speaking our mind or unleashing a torrent of pent-up hostility and recrimination.  I think other Scandinavian/W.A.S.P.-types roll the same way.

And so, with that sort of history, is it any wonder that the little, seven year-old girl in me wants to fix her family?  I wanna have one of those movie families where people love each other and support one another and often choose to be in the same room with one another because they enjoy each other’s company.  I think I’ve made good progress with my father, hopefully the same will be true with my mother.

I’m also nervous.  For one thing, she’s bringing my aunt with her.  My aunt and I have never been that close, so she must be a traveling ally/mobile support system.  Which is fine, I guess.  My aunt is part of my family and I might as well get right with her while we’re at it.

I’m also nervous because I’m not sure what to expect.  Mom mentioned that we’re going to have a “talking party”…whatever that is.  Honestly, if she’s not planning to lead off with a day-long hug while gently whispering, “I’m so sorry” over and over again, then I’m not sure what we have to talk about.

People who like me say I’m “strong-willed” and that I “speak my mind.”  People who don’t like me say I’m a “mouthy bitch who should shut her fucking know-it-all, pie hole every once in a while.”  The truth’s in there somewhere, Internets.  If I’m as serious about making the peace as I claim to be, it might help to try being sweet, patient, and accommodating…just this one time.  Or maybe I’ll just drink a lot.

So, fun family weekends ahoy!  They leave sometime on Sunday and I’ll update you some time after.  Until then…

I was getting ready to go out on a date the other day, and “Garbageman” by The Cramps came on the bathroom boombox. I love The Cramps and I miss them.  They kind of hung it up when their lead singer, Lux Interior traded in his mortal coil for a halo and a new pair of skin-tight, snakeskin pants in February of 2009.  I was lucky enough to see them once at The Ogden on New Year’s  Eve in 2000.  It was a magical show.





Lux spent the entire night slowly stripping off his clothes and channeling the illegitimate swamp demon spawn of  Wanda Jackson and Frank Booth.  Ivy, Lux’s wife and The Cramps’ lead guitarist, serenaded his breakdown behind a giant, gold Gibson (295?).  At this point, both of them were in their middle 50′s and they still looked and sounded amazing. I think they could have gone for another fifteen years, at least.

Lux and Ivy were freaks.  They worshiped at the altar of low-brow, uniquely American kulture and cloaked themselves in B-sci-fi/horror and exploitation flicks, hot rods, two-fisting amphetamines and nitrous, sleazy sex, motorcycle gangs, go-go dancers, fetish magazines, hillbilly records, pulp fiction, switchblades, gender-bending, circus side shows, kinky pinups, and depravity.  In other words, The Cramps were my kind of people.

Poison Ivy and Lux Interior

The world was a far more interesting place with The Cramps in it, and they will be missed.

…yeah it’s just what you need,
when you’re down in the dumps,
one half hillbilly and one half punk,
big long legs and one big mouth,
the hottest thing from the north to come out of the south…

The Cramps-Garbageman

…well my mama had twin babies,
on one sweet summer day,
she beat one in the head,
and I’m the one the got away,
protected by my wighat,
and my Fredrick snakeskin pants
I rode my horse to Hollywood,
and did a wondrous dance…

The Cramps-Call of the Wighat

Rock’n'roll is so great that everyone in the world should think it’s the greatest thing that’s happening. If they don’t, they’re turds.

Lux Interior

I don’t feel great about reposting some of the emails I receive from potential suitors.  Making fun of people for poor grammar or ignorance is too easy and leaves me feeling hollow and dead inside.  I’d like to think I’m more of a candle-lighter than a darkness-curser.

Then again, every once in a while, I get a special letter from a special fella that is simply too good to pass up.  Like, so good that I feel like I’m doing the Internet a disservice by only sharing it with my closest girlfriend.  We’ve been through a lot, Internets and I don’t want to disserve(?) you.  Maybe I can post this and mock it as a way to educate some of the men folk out there in the dating pool?  Maybe said men folk will read this and really think twice about the sort of nonsense they’re sending us.  I know, I’m not holding my breath either.  Anyway…

To the commentary bullets!

•  First, let’s cut to the chase… Wow, spooky.  How did he know that the exact kind of man I’m into is a chase-cutting, man-of-action, kind of man?  It’s like he’s living inside my mind.

•  …regarding the gender thing. I’m thinking the phrase, “if you have to ask…” applies here.  Whatever.  Maybe I could be more clear, but I think most people understand what I’m about.

•  I’m not sure how to read “pre-op transsexual woman”. Hmm, an excellent point.  This site may answer some of your questions.

•  Could you also explain the “Hell” part of your username? LOL, genius…I wish I’d written that.  Well, if you insist…  You see, I use Anna Hell as my nom de guerre because I’m a crazed, devil girl who worships the dark lord of the infinite abyss and leaves a trail of broken hearts and disemboweled lovers in her wake.  Also, I suck men’s souls out through their penis.  Just kidding, it’s an old family name…from Finland or whatever.

•  I am straight but seem to be bi-curious…I am rather turned on by “chicks with dicks”.  Awww,  it’s my first “chicks with dicks” email!  And, I think you can go ahead and just say you’re bi-curious…bisexual even.  That’s kind of like saying, “I think I might be interested in learning about indecision.”

•  I seem to be one of those really “hard to match” people. Get out of town!  Really?  I, for one, cannot believe he’s “hard to match.”  It makes no sense that a silver-penned wordsmith who makes “maps or just geo-data” is still single.  Curse you, o cruel world, why dost thou let yon earthbound angel suffer in solitude?

•  You sure sound interesting and I like your pics, too. Oh, so you like my “pictures” and you think I’m “interesting”, hunh?  Well, screw…crap, I can’t think of anything snarky to say.  I like smiley-face emoticons and that’s actually a nice sentence and representative of “things I like to hear.”  Next time, just build your letter on that and drop the insulting, awkward, over-sharing.

Class dismissed.

To commemorate NaNoWriMo, me and my new, competitive novel-writing team/crafting guild/crime-fighting society/comedy posse, Kittens of Infamy (rowwr!), is going to be dropping our first project on you like a white-hot hairball, any day now. So, consider yourself warned…and invited…to read.

The idea is simple.  There are four of us at the mo, and we’ll each be contributing ~1000 words to a novel every four days in a serial fashion, and posting the results and linking to the previous installments on each other’s blogs…like a more structured exquisite corpse.  At the end of the month (or thereabouts), we’ll have a new, award-winning novel and will start setting appointments to appear on Oprah, The Colbert Report, and Fox and Friends…or something.

Yes, this may, in fact, be the project that kills me (along with work busy-ness, the culmination of my grad school class, dating, regular blogging, and the rest of life), but so what.   I’m happy to be more busy and I kind of thrive on nausea-inducing, artificial pressure.

So, join us, won’t you?  Here are some inspirational team graphic kittens to tide you over.

I care about you and how your week is going, kittens.   So, I offer you the following The Donnas lyrics and souvenir photos in the hope that they might propel you to award winnin’, beautiful cupcake bakin’, super-duper weekend-havin’, booty gettin’ greatness.

Don’t wanna go to the mall,
Don’t wanna go to the movies,
I think we’ve done it all,
Just take me to the backseat!
The Donnas-”Take Me to the Backseat”

Also,

You should listen to us, we're awesome.

and,

Seriously.

and finally,

Why aren't you listening to us, right now?

I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I love music. I like talking about it and writing about it and wallpapering my bathroom with it whenever I can.  I’ve been thinking of this post for a while now and I have a lot of questions.

Why do I like the music I like?

What sorts of songs move me and why?

What makes a great album great?

Should I buy a monkey?

Is it legal to keep a monkey in the house?

If I brought a monkey home, would it throw monkey feces at my kitty?

These are all important questions to ask yourselves, Internets. I’m going to try and help you with some of them, but you’ve got to do the rest on your own…there’s no substitute for good, honest work.

Monkeys aside, these aren’t the most artistically challenging, or earth shattering of Music’s albums, but they always make me happy and I sing along whenever one of these albums comes on.  And sometimes, as you’ll soon learn, these songs literally make me weep with joy.

So, in the spirit of musical devotion and charity, I offer you, in no particular order, the five albums that I like best in the world.

XTC-Skylarking

I love, love, love XTC and I’m not sure that they get the credit they’re due here in Magic America…or even the Magic United Kingdoms for that matter. They don’t tour or perform live at all due to paralyzing stage fright and I think that’s hurt their popularity. I’m sure the fact that they broke up a few years ago doesn’t help either.  They have a lot of great (and some not so great) albums, but this is far and away my favorite.

Skylarking uses the framework of the season cycle to examine the important events in a life. It starts with young lust and romantic love in the summer and moves through cosmic introspection and death in the winter.

This album is so good, but the why defies description. It’s like they perfectly captured the warmth of the Sun and stolen kisses and the smell of summer grass and fear and bumblebees and jealousy and the end of a holiday and regret and apples and mortality in a jar and transformed them into beautiful, little songs.

I love this album so much that I’m literally getting the weepies from thinking about it.

Superchunk-Foolish

Remember that time you fell in love with the lead singer of your band? Remember how wonderful it was to be young and with your love every day? Remember how band practice and live shows instantly got more fun?

Remember that time you broke up with him? Remember how sad he was? Remember how everyone in the whole fucking world knew that you two had broken up because you were in a well-known indy rock band? Remember how you were asked about it over and over again in interviews? Remember how awful band practice and shows got to be after that?

Remember that time after the breakup when he came into practice and said, “hey y’all, I just wrote a bunch of new songs for the next album!” and every.single.one. of them was about you and your dead relationship and how much he loved you and how badly you’d hurt him?

No? Well, me neither, but this actually happened to Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. Laura (the bass player and the one on the album cover) broke up with Mac (the singer/songwriter) sometime before Mac wrote the songs on Foolish.  I know, right?

I figured this out one day when I was working at a summer camp in college. I was sitting on my bed, listening to “Saving My Ticket”and it clicked together like Lego. I listened to it again from the start and cried for the rest of the album.  It’s not immediately obvious from the lyrics, but it’s like you can hear the giant, girl-shaped hole in his heart–it’s so raw and naked. The songs are crushingly sad, but they’re also smarter and rock harder than anything else that came out that year. I’ve been listening to this album on and off for almost 15 years and it still move me, every time.

Ben Folds Five-Ben Folds Five

The first time I ever heard a Ben Folds Five song (Jackson Cannery, maybe?), I was sitting in a Ft. Gordon AIT barracks in Augusta, GA, listening to some local radio. I’d like to think we were some of the first people to hear BFF due to our proximity to their North Carolina home, but who knows.

I don’t recall a lot of good music from the early/mid Nineties, but this album sounded like it was straight from Mars. It’s smart, funny, and band geeky weird and I instantly fell in love with Mr. Folds. The good songs on this album are more fun, exuberant, interesting, and sing-along-y than any other album I own.

Oasis-(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

Ok, I realize some of you may have “opinions” about Oasis and whether they’re a “good” band or not. Frankly, I don’t care and I suggest you take your hatred of Oasis and shove it up your bum shoot. I like this album, ok? I know every word to every song and sing along to it at least once a week. So there.

I’m not going to deconstruct the album or explain why it’s so good. It’s like the blue sky on a summer’s day or making out with that hot guy from Calculus class the first time. It’s just…right. Unfortunately, non-Morning Glory Oasis mostly stinks like Continental cheese, but whatevs. I’d much rather have one great album and a bunch of stinkers than a load of Creed any day.

The Smiths-Louder Than Bombs

The Smiths are pretty fucking close to my favorite band in the world, ever.  Like you, I was a troubled, too-smart, well-read misfit and Morrissey touched me in a way no other fey, asexual, Oscar Wilde-y Englishman ever had. The Smiths taught me how to be arch and clever (and wrap it up into an adorable, poppy package), but they never did much for my heterosexuality.

I love all of their albums. This isn’t really an album, more of a compilation with some new songs thrown in.  However, this is the The Smiths album I would take with me to the South Pole…or into outer space (the desert island thing is cliché and over, people).

Still unconvinced?

Young bones groan
And the rocks below say :
“Throw your skinny body down, son !”
But I’m going to meet the one I love
So please don’t stand in my way

and

Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
And then leave me alone
Dont try to wake me in the morning
cause I will be gone
Dont feel bad for me
I want you to know
Deep in the cell of my heart
I will feel so glad to go

Check and mate, Internets.

And now, dear friends, I encourage you to respond in kind with your own five, happy-inducing albums of music.