If you want to hear me do a Texas accent, head over to Can I Sit With You? live for a video of me reading the bit of the story where some nasty 10 year old "kicker" chick in 1980 goaded me until I ranted the good rant.
Then, buy the book!
If you want to see me read an even sillier, and more obscene, story, come on Thursday to the Center for Sex and Culture in the Jon Sims Center, 8pm. I'll be reading from my story in the book Sex for America. It's not porn... it's political humor that happens to have some nostril-flaringly dirty sex in it.
Speaking of rants! Holy hell, I hate the rain and cold. Though I'm all glad there's ramps, I hate wheeling to Moomin's school, and I hate going up the elevator, and trying to muster a smile for the desperately-smiling yupster moms, which today I just couldn't.
What's with that insane-o chick who greeted me today with a head splitting grin and in a toddler-amusing voice said simply, "WHEEEEEEEE!" as if I must be overcome with the joy of movement or as if I were her 18 month old forced to go down the slide alone, clearly not enjoying it and in need of encouragement. While I often am overcome with that joy of movement, it tends to happen in the sun, and warm, and not in the rain when I have wet hands and a wet lap, hunched and ruffled and huffy in misery like a little wheely owl. All I can tell you is that I was ready to leap up and smack her one across the face with a be-gloved, wet hand. Wheeee, indeed.
I am coming to think that what able bodied people could do most to help me out is to submit themselves for a hearty slapping with a wet codfish. It would get some of the aggression, bitterness, and sadism out of my system.
MEANWHILE, earlier today I went off looking for a notary. I thought of the mailbox place in the big parking lot across the street, but rejected that thought. Online I found a zillion places with notaries. I put on the 5 layers of clothes I must don to survive the brutal 60 degree California winter and set out on the expedition. AN HOUR LATER and several times of crutching into somewhere and then wheeling in only to find no goddamn notaries, who are amazingly useless anyway, the very last place I tried (on a whim as they were a tax place near my house) their usual notary was out... doing whatever notaries do on their days off, the Royal Nonesuch or cavorting in the sleet or returning to their underground burrows and lairs... and had I tried the mailbox store in the shopping center across the street, because they had a notary for sure? OH.
As I wended my weary way from invisible notary to invisible notary, the fancy plant store sucked me in. I bought a $35 hanging pothos. The shame of it... I used to grow them very successfully in jars from leaves pinched from other people's houseplants for free. But to hell with it, here is a frothy thing bigger than my entire body, like an exploding air cthulhu, now enlivening the kitchen! Instant gratification!
Rook is in a sort of Internet Drama about copyright and the Open Gaming License. I'm fascinated! Zomg. His meticulousness, let me show you it. A small part of it. I contemplate this (and Quilty's archival tendencies) and wish I could achieve something like that. Instead, I do what I do.
In cheerier news! I have been spending more time with Moomin and feel less rotten about myself as a parent. He is lovely... I will be rotten today, hiding in bed, perhaps eating his months-old halloween candy if I can find it, but once I perk up with the help of electric blankets I'll be nice again, and help with homework.
Zond-7's mom and nephew are in SF now at a cool-looking cheap hotel in the Mission. I liked having them. It was a little stressful, but good -- mostly stressful to worry over whether they were secretly miserable or not. Of course it was vastly entertaining to be blasted with insight about the characteristics of his family. Also, they shopped and did dishes without any undue fuss, and unlike my own parents and more jaded set of inlaws, they didn't try to do some vast helpful Project like throwing away all my possessions or earthquake-proofing and greasing the cats. (Though the last Project *was* helpful...) His mom is likely the worst washer of dishes I have ever encountered but rather than bothering me to find smears of peanut butter over everything "clean" it just made me feel like a Domestic Genius. (Believe me, a rare feeling.) The characteristics have to do with maybe a sort of disconnect, combined with the ability and determination to guess what other people want and make it so, which can be pleasant and make life smooth, but also can go very wrong at times in more ways than one. We made bread pudding, and went to the mall. They hid a lot in bed with their computers and books, compatible with our normal lifestyle. It was peaceful. I did not stick to my resolution to do computer-fixing for them. I did feel happy that our Unconventional Thing was accepted and respected. I need to come out to my own parents. It always feels icky not to be. It is not about being in their face or anything. It is just not sustainable not to be "out".
Also cheerier! My entire work team came over last night, tromping in with enormous amounts of fancy beer and wine and cheese which they squirrelled away and set out on plates. They draped themselves across my enormous couch & each other, and most of us hot tubbed. My hot tub can fit at least 8 or 9 drunken, naked software engineers in it. Did you know? Some of the newer co-workers didn't know and were not quite in the California naked hot tub thang. Maybe next time. They were sweetly sad yet congratulatory that I'm leaving that job (but sticking around for a while as an occasional contractor.)
I have read the 2nd Empress of Mijak book, well, skimmed it because it was not really that good to the point of being nearly unbearable (and really only the first bit of the first book was good, anyway) and Howard's End, and Terry Bisson's excellent kids' book on the Nat Turner Rebellion, and re-read the Golden Compass which seemed considerably less awesome than I had found it to be when it first came out and I was a young grasshopper with less critical oomph to my brains. I'll just throw it out there that the movie Lyra was better than the book Lyra. The part I still liked, parts, were the panzerbjorne, the atmosphere/background/setting, and the end where Lyra realizes that both her parents are freaking scary and not to be trusted. I loved the book when I first read it for that basic message of not trusting authority & for the lack of happy ending. Yet... as a "strong female character" I have to say, Lyra blows.
