The Naruto Effect

I never meant to give up blogging, but it's starting to look like I did. Well, I didn't give it up. I've just been extremely bad at it.

I've been pretty much alone for the last two weeks. M. is on the East Coast, one of my flatmates has been housesitting, and the other two are working nightly at their restaurant jobs. I'm not used to being alone anymore. Everything feels silent and strange.

At first there were all these grand plans of Getting Stuff Done. I was going to tighten up the whole ship. Develop good sleeping habits, do my math homework, plan for the rest of my life, water the plants regularly, and so forth. But after two weeks alone, I am pretty sure I have accomplished nothing.

I call it the Naruto Effect after the way it struck one of my flatmates a few years back. His wife spent a few weeks in Europe, leaving him to his own devices. During this time we witnessed his devolution. On the rare occasion of his leaving his room, he shuffled about the house in wrinkled shirts. He drank martinis made of cheap gin, ate bowls of cold rice mixed with Prego from the jar, and watched the whole Naruto series on his computer. As far as I know, besides going to work, this was all he did while his wife was away.

Fast-forward to this week. My productivity is shot. It's been deteriorating for a while now, but this week it's nonexistant. I go to work late, come back late, stick a pizza in the oven, shuffle downstairs to watch a TV show. It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead of Naruto, but the same principle applies. I'm experiencing the Naruto Effect. I finally finished the whole damn series, which should set me free, but will it?

I don't think it's about Buffy any more than my flatmate's catatonia was about Naruto. Now that it's over, I will just find another way to waste time. I wish I could figure out how to focus myself. There's no clarity now. There's just the whooosh sound of the days passing. (Yes, and staccato sentences.)

Maybe in the coming days I will direct my lack of focus (can I say that?) toward blogging. Hah! Well, stranger things have happened.

Recession Liveblog!

Actual lunchtime conversation with a gray-haired co-worker whose name I still don't know:

Him: Good afternoon. Will this explode if I microwave it?
Me: No idea.
Him: It's made of metal.
Me: In that case, maybe you shouldn't microwave it.
[pause]
Him: Did you know that if you microwave pantyh0se, it catches fire? I read that somewhere.
Me: No, I didn't know that.
Him: So if your pantyh0se are wet for some reason, you shouldn't dry them off in the microwave.
Me: Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.


Wine country biking trip I didn't pay for


The afternoon after the final party


The first cold day of the season

I haven't been blogging much--I see I skipped the entire month of February--but oh, how busy I've been! The tragedy (yes, tragedy) of it is that I've been occupied with such truly bloggable material at work. But I've been too busy working, and I can't blog about work as long as I'm still here, anyway. And given the situation (Stable job + nasty recession + 3-strikes-I'm-out on the masters application process), I expect to remain here for a good long while.


Yes, I did fail for the third consecutive year to get into a grad program. Every year that goes by is another mark in favor of selling out. The older I get, the more I would be willing to trade for the ability to afford a certain standard of living. The less I want to be sharing my living space with people I met on Craigslist, perfectly lovely people they may be. The more I long for middle-class comforts like the ability to go on vacation, maybe once a year, on my own dime without bankrupting myself.

But how to sell out? Is anyone even buying these days? This schmancy degree has got to be worth something, hasn't it?

...
...

Or not. Well, I'm employed!


Christmas in Midwest (didn't pay for this either)

Heatwave 2009

The weather here is unbelievable. It would almost pass for summer in these parts. It's better than summer, though: in summer, sundown brings cold air and fog rushing down through Dolores Park, making the nights feel colder. I'm in my office now with the window wide open. Soon I will bike to the train in a windbreaker and no gloves. Delightful madness, surely a sign of the end times.



2008: good riddance.

2009, a summary thus far:

1. I arrived from the Midwest with a fresh cold and no luggage.

2. I spent a few days at M.'s stepmom's vacation home on the northern California coast, drinking good wine, eating good food, admiring a beautiful view, writing a terribly stilted application essay, and spending literally hours on a sputtering, echoing, many-times-crossed land line with various airline call-center employees in Mumbai who called me "Madam" while explaining to me that no, they could NOT change the address on my luggage to reflect my actual whereabouts. I don't think I can properly explain how bizarre and disorienting it for someone with a phone phobia (hint: me) to be in this situation: hearing 4 conversations going on at the same time, unsure which person I am actually speaking to; trying to filter the conversation through a constant echo; trying to hear what is being said to me through a constant crackling noise and an infernal beeping many times louder than any voice on the line.

3. I got my luggage 7 days later.

4. I resolved to write in a journal every day, as that's the only way I am going to get the writing practice necessary to making my next experience with an application essay borderline acceptable. So far this year I've managed to do so every day but one.

5. I resolved to drink less and spend less money, but alas, I'm already failing there.

6. I applied to another masters program.

7. I inherited another laptop from M. I'm solidly in the 21st century now, with battery power and wireless.

8. My flatmate's boyfriend was arrested driving *her* car with an expired license and a bunch of marijuana plants in the trunk. I took her out for a much-needed drink last night. (See item 5.)

9. Today I learned that one of my 3 true remaining friends is getting married. She met her now-fiance on a dating website. I remember the circumstances under which she joined: she had just suffered a bitter breakup and had learned that her ex (our flatmate at the time) had joined an online dating site. Largely out of spite, she joined one too, and she responded to the first guy who looked compatible. They got along well, and today there was an invitation to their engagement party in my inbox.

10. M. killed his party as a present to himself and to me.

11. I've been majoring in Las Vegas this week: (a) Leaving Las Vegas, (b) Casino, (c) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (some time to read at last!)

The View from My Recession

We found a new flatmate. He's our thirteenth in three years. Or maybe the fourteenth or fifteenth; I can't keep track anymore. He seems to have two girlfriends. They spend alternating nights at our place, and my first thought was that I must be truly awful at recognizing faces. An ex-addict, current law student, barkeep, and apparently manslut, he does seem interesting, maybe a little too interesting, which is why he wasn't our first choice to begin with. But then, our first choices do keep on disappearing on us--

It's that time of year again; time to apply to yet another masters program that I may as well have picked out of a hat; time to beg profs who don't remember me for letters of recommendation; time to make up a coherent narrative in which I travel smoothly from point A through point B all the way to point C when the true story is much more Lynch than Hollywood; time to ask my boss for money; time for all this merriment, and ah, could it be a more wondrous economic clime?

At least I have a job. A full-time job, with so many people underemployed. I really should not be complaining. My own personal recession could be a lot worse.

I'm late to work all the time now, almost every day. But today I biked to the train at sunrise with brain and body in full revolt, and it was kind of nice. Arriving at the station I felt warm and awake in my windbreaker while everyone else yawned and shivered in their coats. Maybe that's what success feels like.

Screw narrative. This isn't narrative. I don't remember narrative. I don't read novels or stories anymore, I just click through blogs, follow links across the Internet, skim the Economist, apply to three radically different programs in three consecutive years; maybe the lack of narrative is narrative enough. I'm just confusing myself with words now and I think I need another tea. I'll be back again sometime.

Adventures with Mace

The dog has been spared, for now: her health had deteriorated rapidly, but then it improved just as rapidly. Here's to her living to see her 18th birthday.

A few weeks ago, M. threw two parties back-to-back. It was an exhausting weekend. The second party was an underground affair--twice as exhausting, a zillion times as risky, and, it turned out, maybe half as successful as the legal one. The main act canceled at the last second, claiming that it was all M.'s fault for something-or-other. For an hour and a half I "worked" behind the bar selling drink tickets. Having never worked in any sort of retail, I was absolutely useless at making change, and the veteran bartenders happily let go of me once it started getting busy.

The night ended abruptly at perhaps five-thirty. First the smoke machine set off the fire alarm. Then there was a brawl. A nice nerdy hipster kid from Minneapolis was socked in the face, and someone, we don't know who, sprayed his assailant with Mace. Being a warehouse with no ventilation, the place was soon rendered a box of wheezy fiery pain; the partygoers fled, leaving us there with lungs full of spice and boxes and boxes of booze to bring home to our garage. Heed this advice: underground dance parties are NOT worth the bother, and this one lost money, too.

As long as I'm talking about staying up 'til dawn, here are a few of the heat-wave circa-solstice sunrise pictures mentioned in this post:

Dog

I stumbled upon this link at Andrew Sullivan's website yesterday and it sounds a little too familiar:

There are two general signs that a blog is heading toward extinction. The first is a declining frequency of posting, and the second is a proportional rise in the number of posts about the blog itself. These two don’t always go hand-in-hand; sometimes it’s just one or the other, sometimes you don’t get either warning sign. But when either of the two is spotted it’s reasonable to begin wondering how long that curious internet publication will continue to be updated...

It always seems to be that journals — and blogs — begun with the urgent intensity of someone confident that the simple act of putting their thoughts on paper will clarify or improve them, you soon find that a personal conversation is hard. And whether it’s because you find yourself a poor conversationalist, a slow writer, or an incoherent blabberer the realization generally comes that the results are a little less than magical. The realization dawns that what you’re writing is not really in need of urgent preservation.

So you walk away. You give up. You’ve expelled whatever it was that caused you to create a blog or buy a journal. You’re done with the superfluous recording of everything.

Well, I've been aware for some time that my writing is in no urgent need of preservation. I am not the kind of person to let things die, though. First I let them fade toward a mediocre end so that by the time they're really gone, no one really notices. Not with a bang but a whimper, and so on.

On that note, they're putting down my childhood dog soon. She's nearly eighteen years old now, so she's been with my family for the vast majority of my conscious life. Nearly all of it, in fact--or all, if a third grader is not considered conscious. But I remember the day I brought her home as a puppy. It was January of 1991 and she sat in my lap as we drove her from my grandma's friend's house in the back of the red Nissan pickup truck. My little brother, in Kindergarten at the time, wanted to name her Sally. But she was mine--I'd been heartsick for a dog for years by then--so I named her after a magical cat in a book I'd read recently. Little did I know that I was also naming her after a well-known brand of cat food. Well, we got home and introduced the puppy to my dad, who was lying on the floor reading a newspaper. She promptly peed on his socks. Nevertheless, she was always a great dog.

Here she is in happier times.



And here, a few years ago.


The weather has alternated between furnace and windswept tundra. My life has alternated between dull and frustrating. One night it is too hot to sleep inside, our apartment a greenhouse sweltering even with all the fans turned on. M. is out with the Englishman, phone-less and late enough to worry me all the way to crazytown; I sit out on the roof as the sun comes up, read a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, sip a beer and feel sorry for myself. Granted, I do take some decent pictures. (Not pictured.) Maybe it's the sun's rays that knock some sense into me. By the time M. gets back, I'm not terribly angry, mostly tired. And the next night it's freezing inside. We flick on on the electric yuppie fireplace. I am working on my math homework, making pasta, watching The Wire. I used to watch no television at all, but ever since my bizarre discovery that I can actually get more work done while watching something, I just haven't stopped. Right now it's Arrested Development at work and The Wire at home. But there's also been Dexter, Weeds, Firefly, Heroes, and anything else available online on Netflix or Hulu. I'm worried that I'm becoming too passive a consumer of entertainment.

I'm worried that I'm overcompensating for my lack of posting by writing a novel. A bad novel. Postmodern with a swirl o' vomit. Gbye then.

25

I've been miserable at posting. But I'm a quarter-century old tomorrow, and I've never failed to wish myself a happy birthday on my blog. So hello, let me re-introduce myself.

This is Penitent speaking. I'm just about 25 years old. I'm a shit blogger. What's worse, I've become only shittier with time, but I probably don't have to tell you that.

For my birthday I would like:

(1) A year's supply of provigil
(2) Another vacation with M. (Death Valley in April was sublime and I don't know when I'll be able to do something like that again.)
(3) To get into grad school, ha-ha.
(4) A new job
(5) Someone to pay off my credit-card debt accumulated over almost a year of M. being in graduate school and the both of us being addicted to food and drink
(6) Less partying like I'm 19 on weeknights, waking up late, sitting through the day in hangover-induced idiocy, because the whole routine has worn out its welcome. (Or will the provigil fix this, too?)

It's ninety-fucking-thousand degrees outside. Tomorrow my age will be a perfect square. I ate lunch at 4:30pm today while watching Netflix on my work computer, after having arrived here at 12:30-- I am a horrendous employee and a worse blogger and an even worse-er writer.

Hap-pee birth-day tooo meeeee....

I was going to link to last year's birthday post but I must have deleted it.

Instead, a San Francisco sunrise.


And Werner Herzog.

2008: Not My Year

Rejected from grad school #2. I don't know what to do next.

2008 isn't M.'s year either. He's already failed two classes and is on track for failing another.

Revised New Year's resolution: QUIT BEING LOSERS.

I am nursing fantasies of disappearing for the month of August, biking from SF to Vancouver to Denver for the Democratic Convention, but let's see if any of that happens or whether all such fantasies be leveled by penury (as I can only extrapolate they shall).


---

Unrelated photo from last summer:

Craigslist: Lesson in Sociology, or Heart of Darkness?

I know you are slavering in anticipation of my latest catch-up novella. Here it is; you're welcome!

Sam--bartender flatmate--decided to move out with his girlfriend, causing M. to stop speaking with him for weeks. The Frenchy flatmates can't stand living with us anymore, so they're going back to France early March. To "practice their art" or something. Have I mentioned that the Frenchies and the Sam/girlfriend axis couldn't stand one another either? I can't say I'm devastated to see this particular arrangement reach its end.

Apparently we have no friends left--or none interested in living with us, anyway--because it became clear after a month or so that we would have to resort to Craigslist for the 3rd time. Perhaps we truly are as loathsome as our current housemates would have you think. Anyhow, M. was busy, so the secretarial task of coordinating Craigslist meetings fell to me.

Too bad I am a social disaster. I don't think I can adequately describe how much stress the whole ordeal caused me. I couldn't sleep. At work, I couldn't concentrate on my job. Possibly one hour's worth of work was done in those several days. Instead, I sent or received maybe a hundred emails last week. Then, after the interviews were over and it was time to start dishing out rejections, I began shunning email altogether. Every person we interviewed, save two, emailed me back telling us how great we were, how great the apartment was, how much they loved our cats, how well they sensed we got along with them, and of course, why we ought to choose them as our housemates. One guy attached a picture of his cat. A few offered to pay more in rent if we'd only accept them. How would I reject all these kind people who knew where we lived? What if we saw them around? Do we say we reject you because we find your voice grating, or because we just like someone else better? I couldn't make myself respond to these people. Merely skimming through their emails filled me with a measure of horror. When I did sleep, I had Craigslist nightmares. Finally I caved in and asked M. to respond to the emails for me. He thought I was nuts; he didn't see what the issue was, but he wrote the rejections in a matter of minutes, and lo!--I could sleep again.

Yes, I do have a problem.

Once I get past the feelings of dread, I can appreciate our Craigslist experience as a lesson on social groups. I don't know what it was about the cues we included in our ad--price? likes and dislikes? the way we described ourselves?--but the people we interviewed were a demographically homogenous bunch. All college grads: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford. All white, more or less. Mostly male. Most worked for tech companies or did research.

We interviewed two girls. One of them, it turns out, not only went to our alma mater but also graduated the same year as we did, and lived in my co-op while I was "studying"(ha) in Italy. We even have mutual friends.

As I said, two of the people we interviewed did not write us back begging to live with us. One of these happens to be a post-doc in the department where M.'s a ph.d. candidate. His parents are also faculty here, and he was a high-school classmate of M.'s good friend (the one who is also my boss's daughter).

In sum, I have learned that when you post an ad on Craigslist, the responses you get will be from a random sample of the local population. Further, when we go about picking roommates, how close they are to our social group has nothing to do with our decision.

Which two people do you think we picked?

Re-Resolution

I'm done applying. Again. For now.

Writing my statement of purpose was once again painful, a belabored reminder of both how much I hate selling myself on paper and how much my writing ability has deteriorated. I sat in a cafe, staring at my laptop screen with my hands limp over the keys, listlessly typing out the flattest sentences imaginable: I want to be in this program because... ugh, delete. I believe that this program would be the best environment for me because... no, delete. Also, I think that... ew, "also"? Delete, delete, delete.

For months and months now I've been writing material for the second grade, so it's no wonder I'm struggling with the adult stuff. And rather than taking classes requiring papers, I've been taking classes requiring problem sets. Then there's the issue of journals: I used to keep journals all the time, from the first grade onward. But ever since I started living with my boyfriend, I've found journal-writing to be nearly impossible. Hence the blogging, but I haven't been doing much of that, either.

I used to have a few friends I would email regularly--a few long emails a month, narratives really, unabridged stories that, if printed, would span five or six single-spaced pages. Whether or not that's desirable (probably not), at least it's writing practice. But I can't remember the last time I sent an email to one of these friends. A year ago, maybe?

I am anyhow awful at writing these days. Solution: blog more. Can I, will I? I think I will try.

Newish Year

It's 2008. New Year's resolution: first of all, to make some New Year's resolutions. I did mean to, but I haven't gotten around to it. In fact I haven't gotten around to much of anything this year. It's clear that 2008 is waiting for me to make some resolutions before it can formally begin.

OK, here's a modest start:
- Clean my room.
- Start a savings account.
- Don't get in any serious bike accidents.
- Change party affiliation so I can vote in Democratic primary.

Somewhat more ambitious:
- Dental appointment.
- See optometrist.
- Sign up for more math classes.
- Go on one or more camping trips.

Very ambitious:
- Get into graduate school.
- Blog at least once a week.
- Drink less.
- Save enough money to travel to Iceland this summer. Perhaps Rome.

---

Monday night, around 11:30, M. and I were walking home from one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants. Just as we turned a corner toward our apartment, we heard gunshots ahead: first a set of three, then six more. They sounded nearby, no more than two blocks from us. So we stopped walking.

"Hmm. I think those are gunshots," I whispered, stating the obvious.

"They're not firecrackers," said M.

"Are there six shots in a round?" I asked. I know almost nothing about guns.

M. is from Wisconsin, so he knows enough. "Nope. Nine," he said. "Maybe we should walk this way instead."

We took a roundabout route back home. Approaching our house from the other side, we watched as a line of police cars raced down Mission Street; and then, just as we reached our front door, a very suspicious-looking car roared down our own street, all its windows rolled down.

"Oh, shit," M. said. "Don't look, don't look." I glanced away, fumbling for my keys.

When we were safely inside, M. wondered whether he should call the cops. "That was probably the guy," he said. "We didn't see much, but we may as well call."

He called. The cops were interested, and called M. back a few times with more questions, but we just didn't have enough information on the car, and it was all circumstantial evidence anyway.

Curious, I looked at the newspaper a few days ago and discovered that it's probably a good thing that we didn't see more than we did:

For the second time in two years, a San Francisco prosecution witness who strayed from witness protection has been killed in the city, authorities said Wednesday.

It occurred to me, moreover, that if we had chosen to walk on Mission Street back home--as we do about half the time--we probably would have become witnesses ourselves. Gulp.

A Post for Year's End

I'm a terrible blogger.

I was better at it, and enjoyed it more, back when I wrote without thinking about it. Now I think instead of writing; how annoying. Worst of all are these posts after a long absence, in which I feel irrationally obliged to write about everything. I try, run out of time halfway through, and then abandon the post to moulder in blog-limbo for all eternity.

I really ought to be working right now, but I can't make myself do it. I've been wearing other people's contact lenses for at least a year now. I never get enough sleep. The light in my office is dingy and yellow; it flickers or I imagine that it does. I've been late to work every day but one in the past month. I should be writing an English curriculum, but I can hardly form a coherent paragraph. None of these are real excuses for blogging instead of working, but that's all right.

---

Things are good; things are bad.

The bad: Aforementioned sleeplessness. Too much nightlife. Social anxiety disorder, as always. Unable to get my shit together. Money problems. Loser brother. No time to myself. No hobbies or friends. Boyfriend possibly bipolar. Boyfriend's computer died during final exams, so he's monopolizing mine. Choppy fucking sentences. Is this the exhaustion talking?

The good: Job marginally less boring. Good office-mate. The possibility of escaping via grad school. There's an English-language style and usage guide on my desk. Going to Hawaii for the holidays on M.'s mom's dime. M.'s finding some success throwing parties, but this also counts as bad. I'm watching movies again. I even made it to the theater to see No Country for Old Men. Physically healthy and fit. Following the U.S. Presidential race has provided me with constant entertainment.

---

What a discomfiting experience going home has become. My real Thanksgiving bore little similarity to the one I imagined, but I still left San Diego feeling shell-shocked, and I took days just to feel normal again.

I think it used to bother me less because I went down there more often. Things changed more gradually. Now, it's as if everything is changing in snapshots taken a year apart. My mom has twice as many gray hairs as the last time I saw her; my dad's wrinkles are noticeably deeper. My childhood dog, well into her teens, seems exponentially more decrepit with every passing year - and she's been decrepit for a while. Each time I go back, the subdivisions encroaching on my parents' rural enclave have crept a quarter-mile closer.

The old friends who are left down there have changed. The married one bought a condominium with her husband and is talking about having children. Another one has become a fervent evangelical. Kat, the globetrotter whom I expected never to settle down, appears to have settled down in SD and bought a shiny, new downtown apartment. Moreover, after years of flitting noncommittally between men and rejecting relationships in favor of independence, she was thinking about starting a serious relationship. Namely, a serious relationship with my ex-boyfriend, C., whom I dated for five and a half years. I wished her well, and I can't say I was surprised, but I still think the whole situation is more than a little awkward.

Most upsetting, though, was my grandpa, whose mental faculties seem to be deteriorating in a step function. It's not Alzheimer's, and I don't think it's any standard dementia, but Thanksgiving dinner with him was painful. He's been close to deaf for as long as I can remember, but now he has trouble talking as well. My grandma thinks it was a small stroke: he looked frustrated trying to convert thoughts into speech. His sentences trailed off; he rarely formed a complete thought.

He was born in 1920. He's a very old man. Physically he's relatively healthy and active, but I could tell he was thinking about death when he said at the dinner table, "All I want is to see this family back together." He was talking about an old grudge between my grandma and my estranged uncle, Chris. The details are not really important, but they involve money, property, and above all, pride. Chris won't forgive my grandma; she won't forgive him. One result is that my grandpa hasn't seen two of his grandsons since the early nineties. I hear there's another one, a girl, whom none of us has ever seen.

My grandma and dad couldn't have been less understanding. "Why don't you ask Santa Claus? Maybe he can arrange that for you," said my grandma, and my dad snickered. My grandpa looked like he was going to cry. He repeated, "All I want is to see this family back together."

Later, when my dad lay slouched in front of the TV and my mom and grandma putzed about the kitchen, my grandpa moved seats and sat next to me. "I put you in charge," he said. "I can't do it myself. I don't hear so well, so I can't call them on the phone. They moved houses, so I can't drive up and find them. There's nothing I can do." It took him many minutes to get these thoughts out. He whispered, fully aware: "I can't hardly talk no more."

I'm in charge? Shall the social-anxiety poster child succeed as family peacemaker? It's a burden I don't really want, but maybe I'm best suited to it anyhow.

That night, I set to work on Google. There were too many people bearing my uncle's name, and even more with my cousins' names. The search seemed fruitless, so I tried finding the oldest of my uncle's kids on Facebook. Of the ten or so matches to my cousin's name, one was a freshman at my dad's alma mater in LA. It's probably him.

I imagined the message I'd send him - "I think you're my cousin" - and cringed. How should I approach this? "Your grandfather, whom you probably don't remember, wants your dad to make peace with his mother." Or, "Come see grandpa before he goes." Facebook is awkward enough without my using it for such a weighty errand.

I have a calculus final next week. Then, on Friday, I go to Hawaii. I'll think more about this when I get back.

Bracing Myself for Going Home

I'm going back home for Thanksgiving. I want to see my family, I guess, but anything over 48 hours in my old house verges on the nightmarish: sleeping in the old four-post bed where I used to have panic attacks and nightmares as an adolescent; breathing in the same musty room-smells; waking up to the blare of Michael Medved on the radio--more than two days of this is enough to convince me I'm crazy or depressed.

M. was supposed to come with me, this time--I've already been twice to visit his mom in Wisconsin, after all, and SD is a hell of a lot closer. But he's throwing party #597660 that Friday and probably would have found an excuse out of it anyway. Ordinarily I'd spend most of my time with my one friend from undergrad who got herself trapped in a hell-on-earth grad program down there, but she's (justifiably) taking the opportunity of vacation time to flee elsewhere.

It's kind of sad, but I have hardly any friends left in my hometown. My ex-boyfriend C. un-facebook-friended me, which strikes me as childish enough that I'm justified in ignoring him. My old friend Annika is now married to a douche who apparently guilt-trips her for daring to eat dessert, never mind that she's waifishly thin as is. And she's so thoroughly swallowed the idea of being an extension of her husband--ostentatiously, judgmentally--that I rarely enjoy her company anymore. A few others have become so evangelical that I don't think I could spend time with them without resorting to the sort of self-censorship I ordinarily reserve for conservative family members or young children: "Of course I don't share a bed with my boyfriend!" "Gosh, that movie was shi...I mean, bad."

Holiday schedule:

Wednesday: arrive, go to doctor's appointment, lie in bed thinking about human mortality

Thursday: sleep until 2pm, go to grandparents' house for standard turkey dinner, marvel at all the burned stuff, watch fox news, drive home, try unsuccessfully to call boyfriend, stare at ceiling until sleep comes

Friday: sleep until family wakes me, go to see the dead sea scrolls, listen to mom lecture me about religion, come back home, write depressive whiny blog post, try unsuccessfully to call boyfriend, call annika to make dinner plans, learn that annika needs to cook hubby a meal tonight, stuff self with leftover turkey instead, stare at ceiling feeling sorry for self until sleep comes

Saturday: sleep, stuff self with leftover turkey, get close to vomiting it out with flight anxiety, re-pack, fly home at night and slowly recover from brief episode of induced depression

That should cover it.

In the meantime I am watching movies, exciting to do after a long movie-drought. Recently I've seen Repulsion, Shadow of a Doubt, Dial M for Murder, Pan's Labyrinth, My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski, and Tim Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Apparently I have a very dark taste in film.

M. is swamped with yet another publication, yet he doesn't really let up with the manic party-planning. He takes meds for depression, but I'm beginning to suspect he's closer to bipolar spectrum or something similar. And he's once again unmedicated. That said, though, we're getting along well for the most part; three years and counting.

Recommendations

Movie recommendation of the week: Hot Fuzz

Dessert recommendation of the week: Beer float (we used Chambly Noire, but I think St. Peter's Cream Stout or a good chocolate stout would work best).

SF restaurant recommendation of the week: Gialina Pizzeria

Anti-recommendation of the week: Going to mediocre gay dance parties until 3am on a the Thursday before an undoubtedly hard weekend, then going to work the next day. Ouch.

Anti-recommendation of the year: Ignoring snail mail. There may be a hospital bill or two among all the Capital One junk, and if you ignore those they'll send the debt collectors after you.

Because All the World Needs Is One More Blogger

Guess who has a new blog?

No, not me - my boyfriend. He joined his mega-ADD friend in starting a group music blog and managed to keep me awake until 3am on Sunday night composing one of his first posts. Nothing could have been better at convincing me that blogging is the devil.

Which doesn't really explain why I haven't been blogging. One real explanation is "math." Another is "work." And a third is "The Industry."

It took us--by which I mean M., of course--only a few months to break into this city's professional hipster elite. Now it's like an exhausting second job for me: oh, I guess we have to go to that party; I suppose we're expected to go to that; etc etc. It's true that we've met interesting people, many of whom can help us get free drinks, free shows, free parties, and DJ jobs and records for M., but ultimately my priorities lie elsewhere because I don't really like people. I loathe small talk. I like shows and parties every so often, but not all throughout the week. I like movies, books, and road trips even better, but I haven't had time for any such amusements. I've had the same 3 Netflix movies for at least 2 months, for instance.

Doubtless I'd be complaining if I were sitting around reading books and never leaving the house. Is it mad to ask for some moderation, though?

It's a big weekend. There'll be a huge college reunion party - M.'s organizing and DJing it, naturally - and there are at least four extra people who will be staying in our apartment in addition to the 5 that are already there. M. may or may not be DJing at a bar tomorrow night. And on Sunday, we're going to a wedding between the reigning King and Queen of the Scenesters. It's one of those everyone-who's-anyone-blah-blah kind of events. I've been broke for months, but I'll have to buy a dress. Then I will still look like crap in that ocean of scenesters because these people are supposed to look good for a living. My living, on the other hand, involves slouching in an ill-fitting office chair and correcting other people's spelling and punctuation errors. Perhaps, in the future, my job will involve something more sexy, such as correcting other people's errors of computation or analysis. But suffice to say, that's a different kind of sexy.

I'm rambling; so what? I've been fixing punctuation errors all day.

In other news, at the end of this month M. and I will have been together for three years. Three years! Just to think, two years ago our relationship was crap and I would've bet a paycheck or two against our staying together for another six months. Then came Wellbutrin. Thanks, Wellbutrin! Now, except for the late-night blogging that keeps me awake all night, things between us could hardly be better.

(This post brought to you by Big Pharma.)

"The Industry" and Me

Things have been interesting--imagine that! Interesting, and not entirely bad.

Not entirely bad, in part, because I asked my boss if I could work a day from home every week, and, shock of shocks, he said yes. It feels as though the tediousness of my workweek just halved. But maybe I'll get over it. Maybe, during my 4 days at the office, the dullness of this space will seem all the duller. Yet one day at home means better coffee, better food, and above all, more sleep. Not even I can put a negative spin on more sleep.

M. and I have been going to the party at that bar, almost every Sunday night. For better or for worse, we're becoming a part of the scene. Probably for the worse. Too much Chimay, etc. M. has scored himself a DJ gig next month, but, goddamn it, I think we've gotten me trapped in a hosting gig. Hosting. I am the most socially inept person on the planet; how am I supposed to host an "industry" party? How am I to show up on a Sunday night, all smiles and legs, and chat up producers, models, fashion designers, alleged attempted murderers(!!!!!!), bodyguards, singers, photographers, pinup girls, drug dealers, and whoever the fuck else passes as "industry," and, most difficult of all, pretend to be interested in--nay, enraptured by--what they are saying? I am a nerd. A misanthropic nerd. I don't even blowdry my hair. I do not belong here.

Speaking of "the industry," Rockstar Friend invited us to go with him to the Philippines later this year. A friend of his, so he says, owns two houses in the environs of Angeles City.

So we did a little research on Angeles City. I emphasize the "little": I typed "Angeles City" into Google, and clicked on the first hit. Don't follow any of the links on the page, unless you are interested in learning more about sex tourism. Yep, apparently Angeles City is "the best vacation destination for single men," and it's tough to find any information for the non-sex-tourist. Hey, Rockstar Friend--what does your friend do for a living, again?

Is Our Lushes Learning? (Answer: No)

Two Sundays ago, M. and I went out to a nearby bar. M. has been cultivating a business friendship with one of this city's better-known scenester DJs, whose girlfriend hosts a night at this particular place. M. wants to play a monthly deejaying gig at that bar, and she asked him to come along on Sunday so they could discuss it.

Our night went something like this:

11pm -- Leave apartment for bar. "Let's aim to leave by midnight," says M.

11:10pm -- First round of beer. "I only want one drink," says M.

11:45pm -- Second round of beer. It's Chimay, about 9% alcohol."If you're getting yourself another beer, I'll have one, too," says I.

12am -- Conversation with DJ and his girlfriend. DJ gives us complementary glasses of premium scotch whiskey.

12:30am -- Third round of beer. "Sure, why not," says M.

1am -- Fourth round of beer.

1:10am -- DJ's girlfriend cajoles our drunken selves into letting her take lewd pictures of us. (Said photos, regrettably, are now posted on Internet.)

1:15am -- "Uh, I think it's time to go," says M., and I agree.

1:16am -- As we walk out the door, our flatmate Sam walks in. "I'm staying for ten more minutes," announces M. "Ten more minutes, what's the difference?" says I.

1:17am -- Fifth round of beer. Dance, dance, dance.

1:45am -- Last call! Sixth round of beer.

1:50am -- Say goodbye to DJ and girlfriend; meander home singing "Whiskey You're the Devil"

2am -- ???

3am -- Sleep?

7am -- Wake up, simultaneously inebriated and hung over. Exhausted, too. Off to work with me! Narrowly avoid countless bicycle accidents on the way to the train, and so on.

"Never Again!" we vowed.

Well, apparently all the beer and whiskey has destroyed whatever learning capacity we once had, because last night unfolded in the exact same way. One welcome exception was the absence of lewd photos. One unwelcome exception was the result of the DJ's keeping us there after hours: our night didn't end until 4:15. After less than three hours of sleep, I woke up both hung over and unpleasantly drunk. Biking to work was a slow, swervy, terrifying ordeal; and when I sweated, I sweated Chimay.

All of which is a long way of complaining that I feel like crap. And I'm too stupid to do work right now, but not, apparently, too stupid to blog. Or am I? Eh, too late.

Now, July 4 photos.

An Interlude for Navel-Gazing and Self-Diagnosis

Here I interrupt the scheduled programming (proceeding apace, as it was) to explain my absence.

True, there's been work. Lots of tedious, tedious work.

It's also true that M. has exercised eminent domain on my laptop for the sacred, o'erweening cause of Making Party Flyers On Photoshop.

But mostly, there's been the crazy.

A few weeks ago, for instance, the left side of my torso was going through spells of numbness. I convinced myself I had either a brain tumor or Huntington's Disease, wondered how I'd react when the doctor gave me the news--wondered how I ought to spend the last few months/years of my life. The numbness is mostly gone now; I believe the correct diagnosis is "crazy."

Not enough? My existing pathologies are getting worse. Social anxiety rules my life, more or less. Increasingly these days, I think of the bewildering array of people I might encounter Out There and decide I'm better off staying home. And away from the phone. Away from the email account. Away from the blog, even.

The social anxiety is clear. Upon reading the DSM-IV criteria for Avoidant Personality Disorder, it's pretty clear I have that, too-- I think I satisfy every criterion. That's not new, though; all that's new is my self-diagnosis. But since I'm already self-diagnosing, I think I'm moderately depressed as well. And this is new.

I kind of hate fun these days. Isn't that what depression is? "Let us go to a mind-bogglingly fun event," says M. "Holy God, I'd rather die," says I. "Let us be friends," writes potentially cool burlesque dancer in an email. "Eh," says I, and ignore it. Old friends write me emails and I've ignored every one. I think my job is hugely responsible for my unhappiness, but inertia keeps me from looking for another. I paid hundreds of dollars for an online class but haven't had the motivation to fax in the first homework assigment, even though I've completed it. For at least six months I've been wearing borrowed contact lenses with mildly incorrect prescriptions because it's too much trouble to make myself an appointment. The list goes on and on.

One frustrating trouble with social anxiety is that it's a huge obstacle to seeking treatment for itself. "It's easy to find a good, affordable therapist," my friend Zoe told me. "Just call around, and negotiate for prices." Negotiate for prices? If I could do such a thing, I wouldn't need the treatment to begin with.

I need a therapist, I probably need drugs, and I certainly need a new job. These are requisite for not feeling like crap, I think.

Then, there's the boyfriend. Dating (and living with) a workaholic statistician has been hard; dating with a workaholic statistician who is also a Ph.D. student may prove even harder. Yet I cannot imagine that either scenario could bring me any closer to madness than the experience of living with that very same workaholic while he's on a six-month rampage of wanton irresponsibility. And what makes it especially pernicious to this melancholic, perenially exhausted social retard has been the dedication with which he pursues his goal of being manically irresponsible. This is not someone who takes partying lightly. Partying is a serious affair, something to monopolize his (and my?) time and money. I daresay I am not built for this, and Depressive Penitent in particular is built for just its opposite. Depressive Penitent wants to sit in a chair with a glass of wine and some Borges stories. She wants to watch hours and hours of Nick Cave videos with big headphones blocking out all the ambient noises. If she must leave her apartment, she'd prefer to make her way to a good friend's place and sip Belgian beer while watching something directed by Kurosawa or Werner Herzog. Hell, she'd be reasonably content studying calculus. But raucous hipster parties populated by tactically bisexual, strategically anorexic fashion girls with enough black or blond hair dye to muddy the whole Pacific? A million times, no! In reality, though, it's been more like: a million times.

I have the pictures to prove it, but uploading them would be too exhausting.

On Friday M. is throwing another party. It should be a big one, but we'll see. This time M. will be a tactical bisexual, and for the night I'll be officially disowned. The bar prefers gay DJs, see. Couples are no fun anyway. He won't be pretending to be bisexual, at any rate: he is bisexual. Or was. Or is. Or was. I don't know, it's so dizzying; if only I got the sense that anything was real. I'm not mad, or I am, or I'm not. Who knows? Not I, certainly.

I do intend to come back and write about my trip east. It was absurd, really, and was responsible either for driving me batshit insane or for helpfully convincing me that I had already gone batshit insane. Either way, interesting!

Don't worry, though, it's all relative. What's insane for me may be a fucking success story for some folk. Besides, I'm drinking lots of German beer as I type and it's making me frightfully dour.

Eastward, Ho

My week-long sabbatical from the Internet was bizarre, disorienting, akin to losing one of my senses.

I turned twenty-four. I "celebrated" with an aggressively lackluster night out with M. and Zoe, then spent all of the next day working on boring things.

I went to this restaurant for the first time and liked it. A drunken M. told me I should be taking Wellbutrin.

I got myself into a nasty bike accident on the way to the train; good thing for that clunky helmet. Crossed an intersection at a trillion mph trying to make it past a yellow light; a cab cut me off; still hoping to make the light, I pulled a rather risky move and caught my wheel in a rail track, hit the ground in a serious way. My helmet whacked against the pavement and one of my palms was subjected to a deep scrape. I still have shoulder and neck pain from that incident, plus a broken backpack and a cut-up palm. Awesome. I should probably learn not to barrel down busy streets as fast as I can, but I hate slowness so much--

Since M. isn't taking classes until September, he's become a manic party-planner and promoter. Now he wants to make money from it. He's been doing little else. An unfortunate side-effect of this social-mania has been his newfound obsession with social networking sites, Myspace especially. He treats the incredibly silly business of "getting more friends on Myspace" as a job. For instance: "I can't go to bed until I have ten more friends." Or, "I can't help with dinner because I need to make a party flyer." For a while, he spent all his time looking for hot girls on Myspace to be his friends because, he explained, convincing people that hot girls will be at a party is the best way of advertising it. Like the sleazy clubs in Tijuana, I said (ladies free!). Either I'm substantially less patient than I was a year ago, or M. has become substantially more infuriating. I vote for the latter. As well as the former.

There will be a giant party-to-end-all-parties in early June, a birthday celebration of sorts for Rockstar Friend. Rockstar Friend's band will be playing. And M. will be DJing. Sam will be DJing. One of M. and Rockstar Friend's ex-bandmates will be DJing. Three big local DJs will also be there, as well as some supposedly big blogger from the East coast. And all of this will happen, God help me, on a Sunday, which will also be, since the world hates me, the night after I fly back from ten days' "vacation"* on the East coast. (As soon as we land on that Saturday, we will go see Rockstar Friend's band play at a venue, followed by a party at an after-hours club where M. and Sam will be spinning.)

My flight leaves at six tomorrow morning, it is ten thirty already, and I haven't even thought about packing yet. M. is meanwhile busily Myspacing and party-planning. Christ.

I'll be back once all this insanity is over. Unless, of course, I first burst into flames, which seems increasingly likely.

* I put that in quotation marks because it will be the least relaxing vacation I can imagine. It involves early mornings and late nights, as well as ostensible telecommuting and not-particularly-laid-back cities (DC and NY). Moreover, in NY, we will be staying with one of M.'s friends with whom I have an ugly history and who does not particularly like me. She is close friends with M.'s ex-girlfriend, whom I will probably meet and spend some time with. And so on. Pant; die.

Languages

If you were lucky enough to catch last night's inebriated anti-fun rant, you might guess that I've spent the day drowsy, resentful, and brain-dead. And you'd be right. I am not nearly sharp enough to function passably on three hours of sleep, even if I define "functioning" as "being able to write in a personal blog that hardly anyone reads." Not a particularly high bar, to be sure.

So instead, a few factoids from the exciting world of ethnic/linguistic geography.

- Papua New Guinea alone has at least 830 distinct languages.

- The Lemba tribe of southern Zimbabwe is descended from the Cohen tribe of Israel.

- Maltese is kind of a fusion between Arabic and Italian.

- Hindi and Urdu are close to being the same language, though written in Sanskrit and Arabic characters respectively. The language spoken in most Bollywood films is supposedly closer to Urdu than it is to official Hindi.

- Indonesia chose a version of Malay as its official language because it was easy to learn, not because any significant percentage of Indonesians actually spoke it--they didn't. Javanese was actually the largest language group in Indonesia, but the government considered it unworkable because it was a difficult language to learn.

- Don't be surprised if any of these factoids are somewhat incorrect. I am in no condition for fact-checking.