Things to look forward to

1. In November we are going to Prague!  I have never been to Prague but have always wanted to go and have been known to reference the movie Kicking and Screaming when people back in the US would ask me why I had a passport when I wasn’t actively traveling by saying “Because you never know when you’ll need to go to Prague.” But now I do know when I need to go to Prague.  The 20th of November!
2. While we’re in Prague we’ll be staying at the Unitas Hotel.  It was a convent and then it was a prison run by the Secret Police!  I’m hoping for ghosts.
3. A week later in November we’ll be having another My Awesome Mixtape night in honor of Paula and Harvey’s birthdays.  This will be fun
4. It will be even more fun because it looks like my friend Lori will be visiting!  She’ll be my first Detroit friend to visit me in London and that makes me very, very happy!
5. On November the 1st we will be having our 2nd Annual Halloween Party.  I will be the headless nun of Nunhead, unless I think of something better
6. There is a huge Rothko exhibit at the Tate Modern right now!  And I can go as many times as I want because I am a member!
7. The leaves are changing and they are very pretty
8. It’s corduroy weather (actually that’s false goodness, it’s been corduroy weather all summer long (Freudian typo, I started typing winter instead of summer)).
9. Almost 2 entire seasons of 30 Rock online waiting for my viewing pleasure (I’m keeping it to one a day to stretch out the joy)
10. The new season of Heroes starts tomorrow on BBC2
11. A new Jenny Lewis Album that I have yet to buy
12. And other stuff I don’t know about yet.

These are things to remind myself of when I am feeling lame (both literally and figuratively) and grouchy.

Article about Michigan and Obama

This is an interesting, and relatively short, article about the Obama/Biden campaign in Michigan.

Some good (and by good I mean interesting it’s just that I already used interesting in the first sentence) quotes:

“Some of Butler’s neighbors in a section of Bloomfield where blocks alternate between huge McMansions and ramshackle ranch homes were equally torn. (Most of the McMansions on Toth’s canvassing list were in a gated community, where a security guard politely — but firmly — told him he couldn’t come in to talk to voters.) “Obama, he is awfully young … I just think McCain has been there, done that,” said Carole Newsbaum, a retired hospital worker and, like Butler, a registered independent. “I feel better with him in that sense.” There was something else Newsbaum didn’t like about Obama. “I’m afraid he’s a target, and he’ll be in there about a year, and he’s gonna get killed, and then we’re gonna have an uprising,” she said. “It’s a bad thing to think of, and he’s a good guy, but I’m afraid for his safety, too. There’s a lot of hate in this country.” ”

“Unless McCain suddenly introduces a bailout plan to spend $700 billion buying American cars for everyone in the country, though, the economy is likely to matter more than anything else here.”

I find the whole concern for the man’s safety argument to be so disingenuous.  Oh we can’t vote for a black man, he’ll get shot.  What bullshit.  So we can’t vote for anyone too different because we need to concern ourselves with their safety as they are too foolish to worry about themselve.  Ugh.  So I guess we can never ever elect a president who isn’t a white man, because he or she would clearly be killed.  Except, wait, other presidents have also been shot and they were white men.  Hmm, I know Kennedy was a Catholic so that makes him, like, a fake minority or something, but what about Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley?  They were all white dudes and they still got shot?  If you’ve got safety concerns for the president maybe someone should talk more seriously to McCain about that bum ticker of his?  Just maybe.

Just ugh.  Why can’t we stop saying that America isn’t ready and just be ready?  If America isn’t ready for a black president, then why has he struck such a chord with so many of us?  Why did he win the primaries?  How did these things happen if we aren’t ready?

Just get over it, America.  Okay?  Pull your thumbs out and getover it.  He’s the right person for the job.  I know he looks different from the other guys who’ve done the job in the past, but seriously, it’s really not that big a deal.  Seriously.

 

Ouch

Fig 1

So, this morning I woke up at around 9:30 feeling quite smug over the fact that I did not have a hangover despite the fact that I really really deserved one (According to Julia “Drinks just kept appearing in your hand! I don’t know how it happened!”) after going out dancing last night until 2 in the am.  We had another My Awesome Mixtape last night and while DJ Zbornack did not don the headphones on this go I did dance more than I should have given the pain I am in (see fig 1) and also drank way way more than I should have and found that even though I didn’t take anymore Cocodamol after I started drinking I clearly still had some residuals left in my system which sped up the drunkening and began the forgetting of every name of every person I know on earth along with a variety of words that are usually fairly easy for me to remember.

So, right, woke up sans headache and felt smug, that’s where I started this.  then I went to see Russell the Physiotherapist.  Russell and I became buddies on Tuesday of last week when he stared at me in my bra, poked at my chest and then taped back my right shoulder to keep my chest muscles and ribs all stretched out.  Russell and I have an odd relationship.  We discuss customer service in America, what he should do for his 40th birthday, my boss’s bad fake American accent, differing personality types according to geography and how i am not allowed to slouch which is lame as hell because I am awesome at slouching.  Today Russell poked on of my top ribs and I momentarily lost the ability to speak because the pain was so tremendous.  I sort of hated Russell right then.  But he was pleased and said in his thick Geordie accent “Ahh that’s the spot then.” And I said, “Yeah, I guess it is,” and considered head butting him.  But I didn’t because that would have been wrong, I guess.

So now my shoulder is taped back up and my slouching abilities are once more neglected and my chest is still hurting.  Maybe this is my punishment for not being hungover this morning, a sadistic physio.  it’s really just as bad as a headache.

Nostalgia, It’s What I’m Best At

So, lately, I’ve been thinking about the time I spent in high school and the years immediately following.  About 40% of these nostalgic meanderings are due to Facebook and my recent reconnection with a lot of people from the class of 1995.  And about 60% is down to the book I’m trying to write.

Fig. 1

All of this time spent reminiscing makes me wonder how much of my remembered high school experience is accurate.  I always represent myself as being sort of tortured and miserable, but recently when I found some old journals (aka Mead notebooks with doodles and lyrics scrawled on the covers plus one puffy journal with a sunshine on it purchased as a birthday gift in Boston and given to me by Colleen in April 94, see fig. 1) I found the lack of angst kind of surprising.  Up until November of 1994 I was actually pretty, I don’t know, happy sounding.  In November 94 though I had  my first taste of proper heart break (although I referred to it as a heartbend in an effort to feel less weak and affected by the whole situation) which went on to effect some of my close friendships due to the way I handled it and was handled by others.

Also, I always hold onto this image of myself as having been deeply introspective, sort of shy and quiet.  But again the journals do not support this.  The journals support an orange to yellow alert level of quirk, a sense of humor and an excessive level of inappropriate crushes, but I was hardly the disaffected outcast I would have liked to have been.

So what does this mean?  Did I imagine all that angst?  Or did I just not write it all down in my quit time?  Was I really a well-adjusted teen with delusions of disaffection and dreams of being more like Angela Chase (although really she was pretty well-adjusted now that I think of it)?  what is the truth of my adolescence and am I the most reliable memoirist for it?  True I wasn’t into drink or drugs at the time, but with 13+ years between now and then how much can my memory be trusted? More importantly, what does it mean for the current version of me and the stories I tell people of the provincial backwater (admitted exageration) where I grew up?

I accept that most of my stories are hyperbole and I admit this freely.  The novel is, ultimately, fiction even if it is loosely based in reality so I suppose my reality matters less than the new improved version of it I’d like the public to buy into.  But where does the real me fall into this?  It feels narcissitic to go back to old friends and ask for their thoughts on the matter under the guise of ‘research’ but maybe that’s not such a shabby idea.  I could probably benefit from some new filters provided by people who are less involved in my ego.

Either way, I like the process of mining through my (potentially inaccurate) memories and trolling them for anecdotes that I can tweeak and shift into new experiences.  I like changing the outcomes of stupid things I might have done when i was 19 and giving my main character the opportunity to choose her own adventure.  I like the process from the dual perspective of creator and participant.  I like remembering.  Even the shitty stuff, sometimes mostly the shitty stuff.  It tends to have the best punch lines after all

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