bebop!

i am currently obsessed with the opening theme to cowboy bebop. that is all.

towel

I have a box of towels living under my desk (a gift from the parents). I keep kicking it. this constant reminder of its presence makes me want to go clean myself repeatedly. of course, this could also just be another side effect of my job.

hair raising

i'm rocking concept hair today. it's somewhere between carrie on sex and the city and the stepford wives. or, it would be if it were working properly. which it's not. if only i had the patience to actually have quality time with my blow dryer. and had any idea how to wield a teasing comb.

alas.

sick of it all

in a moment of grand irony, i planned last night to chuck a sickie today and avoid the office in the name of running errands, enjoying the sun and living my life.

imagine how upset i was to wake up and actually feel far too asseous to do anything. like leave the house. like sit upright. grand.

an altogether fitting end to this week, however.

waking up

two things that have been said to me in the last few days that have pleased me:

1. "shivery, only you would have even attempted to hit those high notes when you're coming down with laryngitis."

2. "sometimes, it's like you've just got to make yourself miserable to realize something."

the second one seemed particularly poignant to me given the complete breakdown i suffered at the beginning of the week, and the fact that i'm not entirely certain what it is that i realized. i obviously realized something, as is evidenced by the fact that i somehow managed to avoid slashing my wrists in the aftermath and i am here to write this entry. i think i've narrowed it down to three things:

1. i am an afterschool special waiting to happen, and that does not make me freakish. my tendencies towards self-destruction are not really any sicker or more subversive than anyone else's. i'm a big, fat, self-loathing mess and that's perfectly alright...

2. ...because, it seems, i have people who love me anyway. love me enough to feed me cheese and movies when i'm too sad to move or function and let me cry onto them in the middle of the financial district in the middle of the day. love me enough to put up with my bullshit and talk me down from those dizzying precipices.

3. out there, there is a band that understands, or at least understood long enough to write this lyric: "and sometimes, when you're on, you're REALLY FUCKING ON, and your friends, they sing along and they love you...but the lows are so extreme that the highs seem really cheap, and they torture you for weeks in their absence...but you'll fight, and you'll make it through, you'll fake it, if you have to, and you'll show up for work with a smile..." (rilo kiley, better son or daughter) never before has a song lyric so perfectly captured my life as i see it. either i'm projecting, or i'm not alone.

two things

1. the telepic on rudy giuliani (starring james woods) touches down soon. i'm interested in it in the same way that i'm interested in a horrible car accident. it's wrong, but i really want to see it.

2. i think i actually managed to surprise the hell out of a cab driver last night. roos and i split one home because post show we were both too damn tired to contemplate the subway...our driver was listening to french radio, of which i caught small bits and pieces. he spent most of the ride glaring at us murderously and driving like a psycho. which, as we all know, is par for the course. when he dropped me off at my apartment, i thanked him and said good evening in french. he looked quite shocked that a white girl from brooklyn had ever taken the time to learn a language that was neither polish nor spanish (the two prevalent tongues of the neighborhood). i was pleased.

energy/balance

things i am learning about balance: there's only so much you get to pull out of the wellspring of others, so much strength you can siphon, before it becomes your moral duty to pass it along. as they say, energy can be neither created nor destroyed; and i say you only get to be custodian of it for so long. eventually, someone is going to need it more than you do. and when that happens, you have to give it to them. you have to. that's the only way it will come back and fix you when you're broken, and you need it again.

drinking tea. i hate tea.

the funny thing is, with this quasi-laryngitis of mine...a lot is riding on it. if i can get through this afternoon's meetings, if i can make it through the show and deliver something halfway decent, it could be the key to my return. i might actually stop feeling scum-like and get some of my confidence back.

today is the day i find out whether i'm really superwoman or not.

wish me luck.

-

and, of course, to cap of the supreme evil of this week, tonight i have a show. and today, i have a wildly, wickedly sore throat. and two vp's coming to town to whom i must justify my existence.

fun, fun, fun.

still pissy

and lo, further insult.

i didn't get scouted. i got scammed. or, rather, they atempted to. i am not ready for release (which i already knew), but for a nominal fee, they can make me so.

naturally.

-

i have got to get out of here.

i have got to leave this job.

i have got to do something, do anything, because this is killing me. Killing.

i hate everyone in this room. i hate myself, for ridiculous reasons. for letting sally sue get to me. for not talking to my boss about it. for losing the cd i was supposed to have learned by tonight. for not having a handle on my thoughts, for being completely incapable of keeping anything sorted out in my head.

because i just don't care.

and it's funny that i hate myself for not caring. that the one emotion i can muster is the one that i desire the least.

i've been on the verge of tears since i walked in here this morning. i suppose that's an improvement. yesterday i was too far gone to even feel any sort of sorrow.

this is not what i wanted. this is not why i busted my ass being little miss model student. when i was a child, i never said that when i grew up, i wanted to be a soulless desk jockey slowly watching her life tick away in anguish. and that's what i've become.

the pain i feel upon entering this room is not to be believed.

i can't do this anymore.

i just can't.

and i have no choice, because there are no jobs out there for me, there are no jobs out there for anyone.

so what is to become of me? it's only a matter of time before i lose myself completely. i'm so close right now. i'm not even an approximation of what i used to be. i am not myself. i'm not even nothing.

not yet.

though i do find myself delving back into patterns i thought i'd abandoned when i turned sixteen, when i courted the business end of a lethal pharmaceutical cocktail, and upon changing my mind and purging the poison from my body started a whole new obsession, one which has been with me on and off ever since.

i carry scars on my legs from where i clawed myself open with my fingernails in an attempt to alleviate the pain, to give myself something physical to focus on so i could ignore the ache in my mind. the hatred. the belief that i was inferior, that i was not worthy of the attention that was metered out to me.

it takes longer with a guitar player's hands.

i pound hard things until my knuckles are bruised and bleeding, because something like me needs to be punished for what it is. for being so selfish, so stupid, so repulsive.

i'm not proud of these things.

there was a time when i didn't feel like this. there was a time when i felt that i was something special, that i was beautiful and witty and wise and wonderful.

but yesterday i found myself navigating a crowd by pretending i wasn't there, and i knew that the days of tearing through traffic with my head held high and belief and self-respect were gone. i'd stopped believing i was worth looking at. i have stopped believing that. and this fucking job, where i am marginalized and exploited and ignored, this job is not helping.

i don't know what ever will.

not any more.

i'm sorry if this sounds self-pitying, if this sounds hopelessly adolescent and melodramatic. i'm sorry. i just...i feel broken. i don't know if i'll ever find my way home, my way back to myself.

at the end of a hellacious week

so, he called.

but i will not be seeing him tonight, on the pretense that he didn't really want to ask me to start leaving my hood at midnight.

ah well, at least i'm wearing leather pants.

and, let's be honest. i'm just glad that the call was made. that was enough.

that, and an evening with some of my good ones, and the receipt of two new cd's, one all the way from england and one from one of the nearest and dearest that i can't wait to listen to...if only i hadn't taken my stereo out of my room. ah well, they'll have to wait until morning, i think.

some ghosts don't know when to say die.

sometimes i think that i have a massive screw loose up in my ilttle brain pan. this past week, i've gotten several small emails from the ex, one to wish me a happy birthday and one to say that with this idiotic war happening, his thoughts are with me.

harmless enough, right?

so why are they leaving me so very incensed? (aside, of course, from the fact that with each missive, i can hear his voice speaking them, and picture the look on his face and a thousand and one other things that made me excise him from my daily routine, things that have almost made me hate him for reasons i can't explain...almost) it's such a strange thing to be feeling, because i want to be friends with him, at least in theory. that's the kind of person i want to be. i don't want to burn my bridges. not on paper, anyway. i'm finding more and more that in practice, i'm not that kind of girl. i seem to be far more an advocate of the clean break. i want to put this, put him, behind me. and at the same time, it's not what i want at all. but that doesn't change the fact that finding his email address in my inbox leaves me feeling flustered and cranky. and i don't know why. and i don't know whether i'm going to get around to answering him, or when, because i don't know if i ever actually want to hear from him again.

and that, mein lieblings, is very upsetting. it's never nice to be confronted with a graphic illustration of the fact that you're a big, fat hypocrite. which i most certainly appear to be in this episode.

radio silence

i just...i sometimes find it difficult to protest when it is patently obvious that nobody, nobody with the power to fix this, is listening.

perhaps it's pessimistic. but, if they were listening to us, it never would have begun.

countdown

i am the architect of this sensation

and i am the thief of this moment

the vice of reason

due to a server malfunction on the opposite side of the country, today i am working without a clock. it's rather disconcerting. for years, time meant very little to me. i had not yet reached the point where i feel naked without my watch, where i am a clockwatcher whose very sanity depends on the slow countdown of my life.

isn't that sick? i miss having the ability to watch my life tick itself away. it makes me feel strange.

ah well. somewhere vaguely in the vicinity of three hours to go. i think.

war day

if there were any justice in this country, we would not have been expected to navigate the subways today. or report for work.

anyway.

happy war day, all. good luck.

mid-season mood replacement

there seems to be quite the rash of end-of-tether going around here. everyone i know, it seems. perhaps it's the changing of the seasons, the theft of the spring winds from under our noses and their replacement with frigid, biting winds whipping through the buildings.

one of the clan has called off his afternoon engagements because it's all just too horrible; i nearly threw a punch at sally sue in our weekly meeting this morning. seriously. we did with the yelling and everything. it has been made clear that i've been noticing her attempts to piss on my tree, and that i'm not cool with it. anyway. another is simply too furious with the universe to speak. others are going incommunicado.

those of us who can still cling to some semblance of bipedal prowess are attempting to rally some of the clan so that we might drink our pain away this evening.

because nothing says lovin' like alcoholism and free pizza.

so, those of you that have not fallen prey to the ennui, the anger, the anguish of the liminal season, stay strong! it rains tomorrow to commemorate the coming of spring, and then it starts to get nice again...

we can do it, kids. we're really, really close.

in other news...the song "singular girl" by the old 97's sounds really rather letdowns-esque to me.

hm.

about last night

i feel...

i feel that there are many people driving me crazy today. specifically in this office.

specifically the usual suspect, miss sally sue, who simply could not deign to join the entire rest of the office to catch my 7pm show. i don't know why this bothers me so. partially, i suppose because all my friends had express permission to be mean to her, and i kind of wanted to see her subjected to that. because they fight dirty and i'm a bitch. partially because i wanted to believe somewhere in my deep heart of hearts that maybe, just maybe i wasn't being too hard on her, that she wasn't intentionally rebuffing every overture of friendship i've made to her. unfortunately, i now know that i am unlikely to be proven wrong. which is too bad.

specifically, our mystery guest, who is fawning over the former distraction in a truly icksome way. he's been a bit on the defensive since last night, likely because i was flirting with the bartender. and the word around the campfire is that he is, in fact, terribly fond of both sally sue and myself. and if he has eyes, he's probably noticed that she and i do not get on well. thus, i think he's proving some sort of point, or at least attempting to.

anyway. whatever. these people can bite me sideways as a general thing.

in other news, i had a lovely day yesterday. my show...certainly left something to be desired. i was ultra paranoid about this one string that kept going flat. and incredibly flustered because right before i went onstage, one of my tuning pegs absolutely positively died. which was alarming. nothing like getting your final practice on to find out that your top string will not hold anything resembling tune, and is in fact about to unravel itself and fall off. whoops. thank goodness The Man was there to repair it for me. that, however, basically freaked me out, and as such the show didn't feel all that good; i never really relaxed. which makes it okay that i am not, actually, going to get a super duper recording of it. because the guy in charge of that particular event never showed up. yeah. but, there was a wonderful cast of characters that made it out to the show, which always makes me happy. unfortunately, most of them had to hightail it out of there posthaste, but i was able to muster a small crew to hit my favorite manhattan bar, where i got quite a few drinks for a disgracefully small amount of money (as did my sister, because cutebartender found her "lovely." this in turn led her to believe that he has designs on me. i'm not so sure. although...)

and speaking of making me happy...i found an old friend yesterday. and she came out drinking. it was sweet.

so, all in all, a good birthday, though made slightly stalemate by my night horrors.

though would be made so much better if i could just whack sally sue a good one. one good bitchslap right across the kisser and i would be pleased as punch. yeah.

this old heart of mine

i will write more about my birthday later, but first i need to air this out.

i woke up this morning at 3 am with heart palpitations that continued for about two hours.

and my heart is still pounding now.

i know that this is the sort of thing that only compounds itself when you worry, but lo. i am a little bit afraid.

more later.

famous people who share my birthday.

melissa auf der mar (31). yanic truesdale (34). rob lowe (39). billy corgan (36). casey siemaszko (42). gary sinise (48). kurt russell (52). patrick duffy (54).

23 is the magic number

it feels somehow wrong that i have to spend today--61 degrees, sunny AND my birthday--ensconced in my office of infinite doom, gnashing my teeth and trying very hard not to kill anybody. (though, on a day like today, i feel that i should have license to do so. or at least say something really scathing).

ah well. perhaps the green sundress will soften the bitter tang of that notion.

either that or tonight's show!

so, possums, the moral is this: if you do not have to pace the cubicle today, please go soak up some sunshine on my behalf. someone's got to.

jumping ahead fifty paces or so...

this summer is going to be all about:

sundresses. open windows. porn star lips. late night vodka tonics on a bar patio. pedicures. curly hair. good books. dreams of my powder blue electric guitar. absolutely no boys at all ever under penalty of death. ever. long walks. brunch. blue eyeshadow. prospect park. sunblock. sandals.

the morning after

considering the sheer number of people who came through this apartment last night, it is in a remarkably decent state of repair.

nothing that a little spit and polish won't cure.

though i stand by the fact that i am up waaaaaaaay too early.

end of the

thirty six minutes until i am free, free free FREEEEEEEE to go ensconce myself in pink and wonder when the hell my sister is actually touching down (because she decided that she had to be enigmatic, and didn't need to tell me when she was coming in)...counting down, counting down. i haven't seen my sister in ages, in absolutely bloody forever, since last summer, easily.

hurrah!

ah, what a weekend i've got ahead. there's so much going on, and i want to be here so little, it's making me crazy. i have a wealth of sally sue stories readying themselves for the spewing, but i won't subject you to that. i won't tell you that i want her gone and away. or, that if she were about to slip on a banana peel upon which the fall would send her careening into an open manhole, i wouldn't yell "sally sue, watch out!" i won't tell her that if she makes one more move towards trying to take my duties, we're going to have a goddamn smackdown.

i'm not going to say that, not at all.

i am going to say that i am taking off early for this splendid weekend i'm going to have. i'm going to go to soho and look for something pink. and then i'm going to head home, and wait for my sister to materialize.

and there will be much rejoicing.

toodle pip, baby dolls!

p.s. don't forget to vote!

24 minutes now.

counting down, counting counting down.

end of the

thirty six minutes until i am free, free free FREEEEEEEE to go ensconce myself in pink and wonder when the hell my sister is actually touching down (because she decided that she had to be enigmatic, and didn't need to tell me when she was coming in)...counting down, counting down. i haven't seen my sister in ages, in absolutely bloody forever, since last summer, easily.

hurrah!

ah, what a weekend i've got ahead. there's so much going on, and i want to be here so little, it's making me crazy. i have a wealth of sally sue stories readying themselves for the spewing, but i won't subject you to that. i won't tell you that i want her gone and away. or, that if she were about to slip on a banana peel upon which the fall would send her careening into an open manhole, i wouldn't yell "sally sue, watch out!" i won't tell her that if she makes one more move towards trying to take my duties, we're going to have a goddamn smackdown.

i'm not going to say that, not at all.

i am going to say that i am taking off early for this splendid weekend i'm going to have. i'm going to go to soho and look for something pink. and then i'm going to head home, and wait for my sister to materialize.

and there will be much rejoicing.

toodle pip, baby dolls!

p.s. don't forget to vote!

24 minutes now.

counting down, counting counting down.

haunted in melody

i've got a new song in my head and my hands...it's one of those shimmery magic bubble ones...it's so pretty that i don't ever want to stop playing it, even though it causes me to hyperextend the top knuckles on my ring and pinky fingers, even though it doesn't seem to want to take concrete form yet, even though the words won't come yet...i think i stumbled across something good, here.

its main problem is that the way i envision the tune, the verses practically have to be haikus--the syllable space available is just that narrow. and i find it hard to tell the story that this song needs to tell with such a minimum of words (as you've no doubt noticed, i tend to be a bit verbose). i'd ask the person it's about to write the haikus for me, but i think i want this one to be a gift instead. so i'll have to make do.

too bad there's no way in hell it'll be finished by monday. what a gift that would be for us both.

ah, it's so nice to feel haunted by something of your own creation. sometimes.

p.s. i know that obsessing about my music can sometimes be a little tedious for y'all. thanks for bearing with.

yeah, i know the genie in YOUR bottle

and in other news, is anyone else aware of the fact that someone has clearly crossed christina aguilera with elvira and an evil version of dolly parton from the immediately post-best-little-whorehouse-in-texas era and stuck her ont he cover of q magazine this month?

scary, man. very, very scary.

i need britney to come back. i much preferred having her as my dirrty little teenpop bubblegum secret.

sick day

item! i received something rather lovely in the mail yesterday...a little birthday mix from someone with impeccable taste. and it rocks my face. thank you, peaches!

item! i would be listening to said mix right now, had i not left it at the office. which is a place i am not currently. i woke up this morning feeling as though my head were full of cement. and, given that i am a busy busy girl with a sister to entertain, a house to clean, a party to throw, possibly a cake to bake, a co-worker to entertain and a show to perform, all before tuesday, i decided that i simply do not have time to get sick. so, i opted to take the lazy way out and nip said illness in the bud. and it's amazing what an extra three hours of sleep and a long, leisurely shower will do for your recuperative abilities.

thank god, 'cause i've got shit to do and an appointment on tuesday...to get sick for real, because i haven't really been all winter, and at that point i'll have a ten day stretch where i won't need to strut, charm, stun or even open my mouth. it'll be great.

item! the great process of creating "prom hair" has begun today. anyone who made it to my last show knows to what i refer, and understands when i say it is a several-day affair. i bet you're all excited, right?

right.

market lock?

so, i've been getting a fair bit of traffic on this here site of late. a big upswing in people finding me by googling my name.

not so sure how i feel about that, actually.

it's one of those moments where i contemplate locking this beast...

...until the mercenary in me takes over and says "but hey--this could be a great marketing tool.

i'm sick. absolutely sick.

p.s. apparently, i'm decimating the competition on that little poll of mine...thanks guys!

secret identities

dave bagshaw, computer genius, age 33.

kathryn hughes hand model, stockbroker, flight attendant extraordinaire.

who?

exactly.

right here in river city

you read some things and you start to realize that your deep secret heart of hearts is getting ready to cause you some trouble.

certain things are not supposed to get through like that.

because you've already written that song and you've already put that away and you know, you just know, somehow, that a little piece of you is always going to belong to that time, to those moments, and you will never get it back.

i've left little pieces of myself in more places than i care to remember and i hear them calling for me every day.

behind the green...

so, we have a new door.

we found out about it after it had already been replaced.

though i'm terribly keen on the notion of a new door (though i will mis sthe building-shaking rumble that the old, misaligned one sent through the building whenever you shut it), i think i would have liked a bit of advance warning.

like, maybe a few hours.

or a day, so we could have arranged for one of us to be home and pick up the key during business hours. and maybe get a second one made. seeing as how there's two of us.

oh, that's right. key. singular. not keys, key. they gave us one key, knowing that there are two of us living there, and that we both get home well after business hours.

does that seem absurd to anyone else?

i mean, if you knew two people lived in an apartment, and you STOLE THEIR DOOR, wouldn't you at least have compensated them by giving them two keys?

as it stands, i am sad, weeping and locked out until roommate comes home, hopefully triumphant with freshly-cut duplicate in hand.

well, not really, because i'm going to see these guys tonight. but it would have made me terribly happy to go home and maybe change. "freshen up," as it were.

ah well.

so, yes. new door.

all things considered, i think i would have rather had a mailbox.

as you see, i am not being hyperbolic when i say i inhabit a logic-free zone.

r.i.p. pete bishop

and will someone please, please, please tell me why the goddamn reaper seems to be gunning for my family this year?

my uncle died early this morning.

agh.

sunshine gives me a lovely day

i don't care who you are, but if a day like yesterday doesn't restore at least a shred of your faith in yourself and the ability of this world to produce something good, then clearly your heart has died and i can't help you.

who do you think you are?

who do you think you are?

um, ah, well, you see...

that's an excellent question.

it's a hard thing to pinpoint. it's also something i've been thinking about quite a bit of late, in no small part due to the fact that i am applying my job skills and turning the microscope upon myself: i am marketing the phenomenon which is me, and my music. this is an involved process. i've had to write my life history, i've had to create an abstract take therein. i've had to try and distill myself down into a graphical representation, much to the chagrin of my partner-in-crime on this endeavor--whom i suspect i am driving crazy. and it's hard. it's very hard.

in an episode of "my so-called life," angela laments the fact that people are always telling you to just be yourself, "like yourself is this definite thing." and i understand this. i am nothing if not inconstant. myself is not something you'll readily find in hard copy. frankly, the only thing about me that has endured is my uniform color scheme and bouts of self-loathing. (and smoking, but that's a different story). other than that, i change day to day. one day, i'm a hopeless romantic, the next a cynical punk. one day a pencil-skirted, heel wearing lipstick junkie girly girl, the next a boot-stompin', trouser wearing, profanity spouting hard girl. i'm a million different people from one day to the next. i am evenly lost as i am found.

and i like it that way.

i like playing the chameleon.

though there are some who would argue that such an affliction is significant of poor self-image, or an identity crisis, i don't think so. i think that i'm a fully developed person.

i know who i am. more or less, anyway; my behavior this winter has thrown that in to a bit of question. it's just hard to explain.

i know this much is true: i am brave. i am smart (though i find myself becoming duller and duller with each passing day) i often speak before i think, though i find myself growing quieter as i get older. i am losing my faith in hope, though i don't think i'll be able to give it up entirely. i'm certainly not sally sue's inferior, however much she tries to make me feel that way (but that's another story) i am a work in progress and a project in constant flux.

that is my constant. that i will never be so.

so imagine the difficulty i'm having trying to shoehorn myself into a sellable package, even if it's one of my own devising.

who do i think i am?

i know who i am.

who do you want me to be?

who should i tell you i am?

i think those are much better questions.

not that i'll listen, of course.

ps--who on earth logged in at midnight last night and read 94 pages? this is the second day i've seen you. kindly 'fess up, because you're making me nervous.

i iof the beholder

sometimes, i am utterly mesmerized by things of beauty. it's a weakness. though it does help me understand why men become such slavering fiends whenever something beautiful walks in the room.

anyway.

i just received these earrings in the mail. carved cinnabar. gorgeous. and i keep finding myself pulling them out and staring at them, marveling at the intricacy of their carving, the depth of the shade of red...and it makes me wonder: what is it in our wiring that makes us capable of recognizing beauty? that makes our opinions of beauty so different? why don't i think carmen electra is all that pretty while my brother thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread? is this all cultural? is this nurture, not nature? i'm not entirely sure. there are, after all, some universal constants. biologists tell us that we are naturally attracted to symmetry...and...well, actually that' pretty much the only universal constant, i suppose. because, while biology explains why some some guys like to date girls with cadillac hips, it does nothing to clarify those who prefer their with the little boy physique.

where was this going?

oh yes. beauty. why do i think that particular shade of red is the most wonderful thing ever, and it makes other people break out in hives? where does my sense of beauty come from?

in other news...vote!

VOTE!

okay kids, time to get interactive.

i need your help.

there's this internet radio station that's doing a people's choice kind of thing, to determine who gets guaranteed airplay...and i'm on the list for the "future stars" bid.

so, please! go here and vote shivery! vote early! vote often!

yeah, it's cheesy to solicit, i guess, but i need all the help i can get, my dearest darlings.

help a girl out, eh?

PS--the site this poll shoots from is here, in case you want to have a look-see...
kisses!

this made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

So. The Pick-up Line That Always Works

ëWow, those are great shoes.í

Done right, it kills. Kills!

it's funny because it's TRUE.