sundries

[rm]

Did my federal taxes last night. I'll get $49.97 back. Which is nice, as I rarely get anything back, but sucks, because I know if I got that little back on federals, I'm going to owe on shitty, shitty New York State taxes because they are really awful as a rule. I'm grumpy, because I really thought this year was going to be different.

Yesterday: mailbox money! Of an even tinier amount, I'm afraid, but hey.

Claudette/Cricket (we're in name limbo) just ate a spider. Patty is not so good with spider-kind, so she'll be pleased.

Ask Morbo.

via ellen_kushner: Saving a NYC candy store.

Death Bear. If you read one link from me today, read this one. Also, if you live in Brooklyn, Death Bear is available to you.

Today's tasks: work hard; go to DWNY thing with Russell Tovey; somewhere between the two send an email even stranger (and a lot more important) than the one I sent to Virgin America about the ants on the plane.

Patty was up in New Haven all day yesterday (like, out the door at 7am, home at midnight) for academic stuff.

Last night I went digging on my harddrive for a story I wanted to finish before tonight (Jack/Alonso) and instead found this depressing Gwen story I'd been working on instead and noodled on that a bit.

Today's arbitrary wish: that I had the sort of brain that could devise television game shows. Someone I know just optioned something that's going to make him rich beyond rich. Seriously, his entire life is going to be different, and if you'd asked me, before I heard this thing come out of his mouth, I'd have said "least likely to anything." Goddamn.

Meanwhile, I have to write two fucking treatments this week and I haven't even decided for what yet. And don't even ask me what the fuck I'm going to bring to the meeting I have mid-month. I've no goddamn idea yet. And it's frustrating, because my pitching is GREAT, I just gotta know what the right here, right now, gonna sell, sell, sell thing is. It is, I'm finding, a bit like playing poker. No matter how good a gambler you are, there are elements that are never going to be within your control; that said, attitude is everything.

Semi-tangentally: this week I need to deal with some possible agent-y stuff for the made of words part of my life.

WWII-era plane crashes off Florida. A lack of specificity in the CNN report led some commenters to ask if it flew out of the Bermuda Triangle, but apparently this was an airshow accident.

The former German naval officer who saved the port of Bordeaux has died.

The no-longer secret co-author of baseball history.

The New York Times covers abuse allegations about Scientology. It's nothing you've not heard before if you follow this sort of thing online, but big papers generally avoid the subject, and this is notable for that. Also: photo essay!

Weirdest internal response I've ever had to RPF: wanting to defend the honor of LAX. And I hate LAX. It's only saving grace is it's generally warm when you get off the fucking plane.

Which reminds me: this week I've got to make an appointment at the retouchers for my headshots and get this stuff done. Oh hey, photo you haven't seen. I don't really like it (my photog does), but I know I don't like it because my main reaction to it is the same level of discomfort I get looking at photos of other people -- I feel like it can see me and thinks poorly of me. We're not well in this business, we're really not. Also, my hair is doing something stupid and the line of my waistcoat leaves a bit to be desired.

Meanwhile, I've got to start poking at my website, although I can't really do that until I get the retouched photos back.

Finally, I've received two communications in the last week that have sat oddly with me, through no particular fault of the communicators.

The first, was from my private school, of which I am not an alumna, but since I went there for ten years, and only went to my other school for two and a bit, I asked to be put on their mailing list at some point mainly to market my book. The head of the alumnae association is currently a woman who was in my class. We were relatively friendly (I was playing at her house when Anwar Sadat was shot), because we were both low on the social hierarchy, but we also fought, because that's what the trampled on girls do -- claw their way over each other. And she had good breeding (DAR) and I didn't. So a postcard came in the mail from the school, informing me of the date of the all-classes reunion and noting she hoped I would be there. And I thought: what will I wear? I know how to fit in perfectly (and feel miserable) and I know how to be myself (and still be judged by these people), and it's hard to know what to do, since all these years later, I still don't want any of them to think they won. These are, I know, my own issues.

The second communication was via Facebook from a photograher I modeled for some years ago. It said, in part "You look... different. But I had fun working with you." My current Facebook photo is very masculine, and I can't stop staring at the "..." of his message. I hear an awkward pause, a disappoint, a desire to ask what's in my pants about it. It may be none of those things -- I mean, for fuck's sake it's Facebook and it took me twenty minutes to remember who the guy was. But I found I didn't like it. It's funny, believing myself to be a hundred beautiful things, and also being this type of insecure.

Comments

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Communication the second strikes me as the sort of thing that is "ugh!"-worthy, but can safely be ignored.

Communication the first...well, in your shoes I would go as myself, let the fuckers judge all they like, but be open to my own badassery (and the possibility that they judge out of fear of that, not because I am doing it wrong).

Not sure if that's helpful or not, but those were my reactions.

I can see what you mean in that photo. It's a good shot of you, but it's not the Ideal Shot, if that makes sense.

And strangely, I didn't hate LAX. Everyone I know does, though. I feel like I've fallen through a rip in time and space and wound up at the wrong airport.

Hooray for Tovey day!

[rm.livejournal.com]

You haven't seen enough airports to hate LAX. It's jsut that the baggage claim is pretty much designed so peopel can steal your shit. Also, if you're flying in from AsiaPacific, you come into a totally different terminal, have to go through customs and then go over to the domestic terminal to connect through to NYC -- it BLOWS. Also, WHERE IS THE FOOD IN THE VIRGIN AMERICA TERMINAL?

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I'm also all wide-eyed and curious about everything. So, you know, the new hasn't worn off of LAX for me yet. I also kind of dug the mysterious tile thing in one of the badly lit corridors from a "now that's interesting" POV.

So, you know, consider the source.

Though you may be amused that I got quite Henry Rollins about the moving sidewalks, and how not walking on them = stupid because you could be going so very fast. Hell, I was faster than the Slovakian Olympic ski team in Phoenix because they were just standing on theirs and was walking on regular floor because they were obstructing it.