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September 29, 2003
I Live In Fear.
About half an hour ago, Murray came charging out of the bathroom in a manner which has come to be associated with a particularly productive litter box session. He has now made this run three or four times, and he keeps going back in there as if he can't quite believe what he just made.
I think I will pee on the patio for the rest of the night.
Posted by hilatron at 09:41 PM | TrackBack
September 27, 2003
Hello, Doctor.
I think I have a touch of the social anxiety disorder. It's not a big deal; I mean I can still go to parties and stuff. I just tend to spend a lot of time afterward going over and over every single thing I said or did, and that was said and done to me, and constructing possible negative reactions to the one and motives for the other. And if I find myself in a mildly stressful situation with someone I don't know well, that's no good. And if the mildly stressful situation is my fault, well then just forget about it.
Do they make Baby Paxil?
Posted by hilatron at 12:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 25, 2003
What Shelly Duvall would find in my typewriter.
Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Someday I will have an office with a door that closes. Etc.
Posted by hilatron at 04:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 24, 2003
Who? What? When? Where? Why?*
My to-do list at work has started to include questions as well as commands. Phrases like, "Who needs a password?"** and "Ticket to fundraiser for Person X - comp?" are popping up all over. I can only assume that given my current mindset, I will soon be scheduling myself to contemplate the nature of man and pondering whether to prioritize "Am I really a valuable member of society?" as Low, Medium, High, or Today.
*I remember learning about the Five Questions in second grade with Mrs. (holy crap, I think I've blocked out the name of my second grade teacher, not without good reason), but I do not remember whether she touched on How, or how it was presented. An addendum? A latecomer? A rebel child? I realize it disrupts the alliteration, and five is such a nice number, but this irritates me. "How" is important. Also, given Mrs. X's tendencies, I am surprised that she did not eliminate "Why" instead. She never did seem to like that question.
A search on Google indicates that some use Why and some use How, and some combine the two, which is just silly. Though "Why" and "How" can be related, they are very different. Just admit it already! There are six questions!
**Don't miss the exciting new game show, "Who Needs a Password?" Guess which of your colleagues will suddenly no longer have access to the network after the computer upgrade! Find out if your Internet stalker has access to your Yahoo! account, after all! Watch as Mr. John Colbert from Sioux City, Iowa tests his luck against a pack of hungry Rottweilers and a door that may or may not require a code to open! Fun for the whole family!
Posted by hilatron at 09:42 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 23, 2003
I tell myself that things are not as dire as they seem.
Gah.
This morning I attempted to do some financial planning for the upcoming year, and the prognosis is grim. For the last month (or two months, if one counts the Tiki party, and I suppose one must), I have been doing a good job of pretending that my income this past year has not been reduced by about one-third compared to the year before. While this is not in itself a huge crisis, my calculations show that I have got to cut that shit out. My necessary expenses have risen of late, and my current pay is barely going to make it as is, counting the extra hours I am working right now, a gravy train that will only last for the next five or six weeks at most.
So it's time to revive my interest in coupon clipping. Avoid stores and other temptations. Replace the word "and" with the word "or." Seriously consider a second job instead of bouncing from one dubiously productive creative endeavor to the next. Generally act like a grownup. In other words, although everything will be okay eventually, it's not going to be a lot of fun getting there.
It's been nice seeing you, my real-life friends. Please don't take it personally when I can't go anywhere, and remember that you're welcome at my place for saltines and water any time.
Posted by hilatron at 09:45 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 21, 2003
And you get to play with glue, too.
I've always been fascinated by optic devices: magnifying glasses, microscopes, and the like. How they let you see things differently. However, I was content to stick to playing with them, saying "ooh," and moving on, until better minds than mine came up with a good use for those little glass hemispheres you buy in the craft store.
I became interested in what things with different textures would look like:
Set 1. When in doubt, start with glitter.
Set 2. Fabric.
Some closeups.
--
--
Now I just have to figure out how to finish the sides off better.
Smaller magnets, or larger marbles, would help. Once I figure this whole system out and find more fun things to stick together, I plan to make some as presents and possibly to sell.
Posted by hilatron at 10:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 20, 2003
She's Crafty. She gets around.
My fingers itch. I want to make things. Go to the craft store, pick out colors, contemplate textures, manipulate objects. Learn about glue, fasteners, facings, construction. Less telling, more showing.
I would be a lot more likely to have a successful life if I could stick to one damn discipline. But I find it hard to resist the twitch twitch twitch of a new (or resuscitated) interest.
Posted by hilatron at 01:00 AM | TrackBack
September 19, 2003
Avast, etc!
There is something in me* that resists a bandwagon, even if it's a bandwagon that seems like it would be a hell of a lot of fun. But that's dumb. So:
Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!
*I'm guessing the same angsty adolescent part that sneers at fashion magazines while secretly coveting them, and hopes that no one saw me go into Banana Republic last weekend. I mean I was just looking. That judgmental brat needs to buy a ladder and climb over herself, already.
Posted by hilatron at 08:04 AM | TrackBack
September 18, 2003
Fa-fa-fashion? Fu-fu-fuhgeddaboudit.
I sincerely do not fucking understand how other people manage to get dressed every day, I really don't. Each morning I am faced with a wardrobe that, while overflowing, consists mostly of things that don't fit, things that I can't wear because I haven't ironed, things with lingering pit stains and/or smell, things that I have spilled mustard on, or things that can only be worn to costume parties. It can be assumed that the few garments that survive this elimination round won't go together. Every day is a struggle, not just because of the daunting state of sartorial affairs but because I find myself embodying yet another simpering girl stereotype. "Ooooh, I have nothing to wear," I shriek in my head, capering around a closet so stuffed I can barely shut the doors. Could anything be more degrading?
There is nothing I know of that can solve this problem. Tempting as it is to just chuck it all and start over, money wouldn't help. I could steal the entire contents of the Cambridgeside Galleria and it wouldn't do a thing: removed from their air-conditioned habitat, pulled from their spotlit refuge and thrust into the harsh light of day, the freshly steamed shirts and crisply folded pants and gracefully draped sweaters would last maybe a day or two before joining the rest of my sad, bedraggled stuff in its parade of shame.
It's something about me, I guess. I iron a shirt, and by the time I get to work it looks like someone tried to eat it. I put on a pair of pants, bend over once, and the butt is sagging down to my knees. I can do all the sorting my little heart desires, but every time I do a load of laundry my clothes get closer to their goal of becoming one: colors approach the same shade of dingy brown-gray, fibers intermingle until you can't distinguish a washable silk blouse from a terrycloth robe. Nothing is safe from my powers of destruction. If I manage to find a fabric durable enough to withstand wrinkles, I spill something on it. If it's stainproof, well, I'm sure to stumble into a jigsaw or something and rip the damn thing. Or I get creative with the laundering and shrink it down to Britney size. If it turns out to be indestructible, then I'm certain to not have the right shoes.
I always start out with good intentions; you have no idea how great I look in my head. And I even have a decent basic sense of what shapes are flattering, what colors go together, just how much of Gradma's costume jewelry one can get away with wearing. You just wouldn't know it to look at me. The grim three-dimensional reality of wearing clothing, keeping it clean, keeping all the buttons on and the collars straight and blah blah, is just too much for me.
I implore those I know to give me a bit of hypocritical leeway here. Although I'm sure you all know how much I love to look askance at hoochie mamas and stirrup-pants wearers, I beg you to try to see beyond my crinkly, stained, lumpy, ill-fitting reality and try to find the vision I started out with. Somewhere, there is a kernel of aesthetic pleasure to be found, even if it's only latent.
Oh, and could you warn a girl if you invite her over to a no-shoes household? Some of my socks still don’t have holes, you know. If I'm going formal, I need a little advance notice. Jeez.
Posted by hilatron at 08:43 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 16, 2003
A Lesson in Tact
Say your company has placed an ad in a publication, and someone contacts you about that ad, asking you if they can fax you a proof for your approval. You get the fax and are not happy with the ad, so you call the person back. What do you say?
What you do not say is "I'm going to send you a new file, because this looks really bad." The reason that you do not say this is that it's entirely possible that the person on the other end of the phone never got "a file" from your company at all, but a rather cryptic handwritten note, and that this person therefore designed the ad, the "really bad" ad, herself, and that the fact that it doesn't include your little logo or your font of choice or your goddamn phone number is not her fault, but that of the person who wrote the cryptic note and never said a word about any file, and it is further possible that this person you are talking to has gone from mildly boring part-time employment to being a publication designer, advertising coordinator, party planner and general abuse taker all within the last two weeks, and is therefore a tad stressed, and that the thick skin she has been building since about second grade specifically to deflect the offhand remarks of clueless assholes like yourself has been stretched to the limit, and that your "really bad" will occupy way more of her attention for the rest of the day than the tenth of a nanosecond it is worth, you tiny little petty person you.
Thank you for your attention.
P.S. AGaramond? Girl, please.
Posted by hilatron at 02:06 PM | TrackBack
Back to work, Missy!
Although "Live From San Quentin" has been in heavy rotation, I have not been in a funk over Johnny Cash all weekend. My silence has more to do with the unfortunate concurrence of an unusually busy workplace, freelance projects, and personal ambition. I'm bouncing around between formatting page numbers, trying not to throttle my superiors, and making myself a coat. Because, you know, there's no time to start a big sewing project like when you suddenly have to adjust to a full-time work schedule and more responsibilities than one human can sanely fulfill, after all! That's me, life planner extraordinaire!
Anyway, whatever, though my living room looks like a sweatshop right now, I'm going to look fabulous when it's all over. In the meantime, please forgive the short, boring, oh so not funny posts. Or leave and never come back and take me off your links list, why don't you?
Oh - if someone could help me locate a black felt bucket hat like the one at Arden B, only NOT costing sixty dollars (?!?), I would be eternally grateful. Also, if it's possible explain the disturbing phenomenon of my actually liking the new fall clothes at that store, not to mention Benetton, Banana Republic, Bebe, and the like (is it a B thing?), that would be great. Thanks everso.
Posted by hilatron at 09:39 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 12, 2003
May the Circle Be Unbroken
RIP Johnny Cash.
I mean what do you say about that?
Posted by hilatron at 08:23 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
September 10, 2003
When Pants Go Too Low
I just wanted to post a belated weekend update, because I was actually somewhat more jet-setting than I normally am, and I also have a project that needs some input. This weekend and the weekend before it, whoo, what am I, becoming a social creature or something?
Anyway.
Friday: Agent Courtney, DQ, Josh and I met up for beer and French fries and tasty sandwiches at Charlie's, followed by American Splendor. Charlie's is a reliable old standby. Splendor was an unexpected delight, mostly because I hadn't read much about it other than a general buzz that it's good. And it is. Real good: funny, dark, brilliantly acted, wittily edited, and even sweetly romantic in a way you wouldn't expect and will never find in your Uptown Girls and your How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Go see it.
Saturday: This is where things get real out of character. On Saturday I donned my sparkly teal eyeshadow, because where else am I ever going to wear it, and hied myself off to Lansdowne St., home of both Fenway Park and the Avalon Nightclub. Why did I choose to rub shoulders with Bruce Springsteen fans* and thong-exposing, tight polyester shirt-wearing, dress code-abiding, hookup-seeking clubgoers?
Bec, aka Secret Agent Spork, aka one half of The Saint Eve, aka Most Likely to Be My Famous Friend, was doing a show there, that's why. The fabulously talented Bec and her partner Gabrielle are on tour for a Certain Liquor Company, going to various upscale-ish nightclubs around the country and providing VJing services as part of a traveling party/promotion for their newest liquor flavor. Not VJing like your old-school MTV, you understand, but VJing like toying with your optic nerve in thrilling ways.
It was a strange and split-personality sort of night: on the one hand, pure fun in video form; on the other hand, girls in vinyl hotpants and wigs handing out tiny glasses of free liquor. On the one hand, my bemused friends; on the other, hordes of drunken and tightly clothed partiers showing each other their buttcracks. On the one hand, a charming juggling free-drinks-dispensing bartender; on the other, women pulling their tops lower to score better tips at the paid bars. An element that does not quite fit into either hand: the performance artist people, who dressed in fetching costumes and then did disturbing and sometimes invasive things, like pretending to cry or rubbing lemons on us. Good or bad? Who can say? Definitely sticky, though. At first, it was all a great social experiment, but I quickly grew overstimulated and was glad to flee the meat-market aspects of my surroundings.
I wish Bec and Gabrielle the best of luck in navigating these murky, fleshy waters. They are doing a little project in conjunction with their tour, which you can read about and contribute to here, please and thank you.
The better to tip the balance of my evening over into Skanky, I walked past the frat house down the street from our house on my way home from the Avalon. What I would've, could've, should've said to the frat boy who snarked "She's really pissed off that there's a party going on, isn't she?" when he saw the face I made upon realizing that his friend was pissing into a bush right by the sidewalk:
"Do you want to smell my urine? No? Then we're even."
"Sorry, I'm just desperately trying not to overreach my monthly quota of flaccid, drunken penis sightings. And it's only the sixth! I'm sure you understand."
"Yes, because nothing says 'Party!' like 'I can't find the bathroom.'"
Oh, well. Chances missed; lessons learned. I'll be ready for them next time.
*I have nothing against Bruce, man. I'm just not much of a superconcert, large venue, throngs of people kind of girl.
Posted by hilatron at 12:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 08, 2003
The Funny Thing About Senses
Today I had to borrow Josh's deodorant. This has been pretty confusing so far, because I keep getting a whiff of it and having this "awww" reaction, like a sense-memory of hugging Josh. Which sounds all nice and cuddly, but remember: actually I am at work, smelling my own armpits.
Posted by hilatron at 09:30 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 05, 2003
Moving on, plus random notes
I've passed the point where I have those late-for-the-exam dreams. Last night my anxiety materialized as: eating Chicken Nuggets and being called a "hypocrite vegetarian," and then fighting Martians (yes, in the dream, although they looked human, they were explicitly referred to as Martians) alongside Joey Tribbiani, who by the way totally dug my weapon of choice, a steel chair. Although this probably means that I need to cut back on the trash TV, I'd like to note that me and Joey kicked some MAJOR ASS.
Could someone please go see The Order and tell me if it sucks like history says it should? Thanks ever so.
Also, sometimes I'm dumb. I've had this weblog dealie for a year now, and only just noticed that Moveable Type includes a notify list function. If you'd like to get an e-mail every time I update this thing, just drop me a line with the subject heading "glutton for punishment."
Posted by hilatron at 02:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 03, 2003
Petulant Wednesday
Hey kids, it's petulant Wednesday! Won't you please join me in sighing, rolling your eyes, and flopping dramatically into your chair about:
Forms. You want people to be able to order a service, and so you write an explanatory letter on charming letterhead, you enclose an informative sheet about the sizes and prices and requirements of the service you are offering, you design a lovely form which people can use to provide you with all of the information you need to provide the service, no more, no less. Does this help you? It does not help you one bit, because people do not want to use the form. They would rather call you, and ask "What? What's this? What do I do? Do you think I should do this? What? What?" They would rather send you checks accompanied by long handwritten notes that tell you all sorts of things you never wanted to know about them, but do not help you to provide the service in the least. They would rather come to your workplace, and stand too close to you, and ask you to "just see" if a scan of a fax of a full-color image will be publishable.
Your shirt. Because where did that hole in the armpit come from?
The telephone. It just rings and rings, no matter how much work you have to do, no matter how violently you flip it off while using your best Nice, But... Voice. It will not let you concentrate for more than one and one half minutes on any particular thing. The other end of it tends to contain people saying "What? What?" or people who think that you have magic powers and can produce your absent boss at their command or people whose Robot-to-Dumbass phrasebook translates "Would you like her voicemail?" as "May I write down your long, rambling message, the better for its intended recipient to lose it, while all the other lines ring off the hook?"
Your coworkers. They will not stop asking you for things, or reminding you of things that you had blissfully forgotten about, and you are not allowed to hiss or even growl at them. Then they make you feel all guilty by being perfectly nice, intelligent people who are only asking you to do your damn job, after all.
The convenience store near work. For not selling bourbon, massages, valium, large bricks, or any other items that will help you get through the end of the day without screaming "I, like, totally hate you!" and running to your room and slamming the door.
Happy Petulant Wednesday! (Apologies to Pretty Girl.)
Posted by hilatron at 01:57 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 02, 2003
Laborless Days
It's been awhile. Where have I been? I have been at a party. It actually only feels like I have been on a non-stop social bender since Thursday, as the weekend's events were separated into beer-pizza-movie night, housewarming party, block party*, post-housewarming party beer-pizza-movie night, and barbeque. But still, whew. So much traditional Labor Day celebrating!
Although I am not complaining one bit about the generous hospitality of my various hosts, all this socializing has left me limp and drained. Casual conversation does not come easily, and I have to be vigilant in social situations lest I fall into my accustomed mode of sitting very still and watching very intently - I'm here to observe, after all. Unfortunately, this behavior usually either a) makes people nervous or b) convinces my hosts that they are not providing me with enough fun. So to avoid being That Weird Girl I have to give myself little pep talks: "Okay, Hilatron. Here's a person. They're looking at you. You should talk to them, before you both reach that quick-glance-weak-smile-look-away stage. Hurry! What to say? Do you know anything about them? Talk about work maybe? There, that's it. Go ahead, ask how work is going, get them talking. Score!!" Repeat this process times one hundred and I am all pooped out. I did not have my Quiet Time.
Despite my social backwardness, I am fortunate. For starters, I am lucky enough to have the problem of an overflowing social calendar in the first place, with an astonishing variety of talented and exciting people willing to overlook my issues, smile tolerantly, and offer me another snack. I am not the man I encountered on Beacon Street at one in the morning, walking along engrossed in conversation with his stuffed raccoon. I am not the bus driver with the habit of staring blankly into space for an uncomfortably long time before responding to questions such as "Where does this bus go?" I did not die in a fiery crash as a result of said delayed reaction time. I was raised with better manners than to shout "Hey! Want a gin & tonic?" at passers-by of my back-to-school houseparty, only to snicker rudely when they reply "Only if I can pee first." For a That Weird Girl, I'm doing pretty well.
*The block party was so great it almost made me cry. Who would have thought that Button-down Boston would tolerate such a thing, let alone condone it? Yet there were the turntables set up on the porch, the kids getting down to the sexy soul classics, the MacGuyveresque grill apparatus, the liquor in a trash can, the very Irish cop surveying the proceedings with a smile.
Posted by hilatron at 03:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack