aaaaah and ouch

I'm at work.

I have a pounding headache and a million deadlines.

Wore my new coat for the first time. It's only knee length, single breasted, no belt or vent in the back. But god, it gives me a perfectly straight line from shoulders to knees and settles onto my shoulders like a dream and it makes me just so goddamn happy.

on my desk:
vitamin water
red bull
tylenol


sign on my apartment building this morning:

"The boiler will be turned off on September 26 from 1am - 5pm. We are sorry for any conveniences this may cause you."

sundries

- I have survived my first two responsibilities of the day mainly by being too tired to panic. I've had red bull, vitamin water, tylenol and a gluten-free brownie. I almost feel human. Now I can settle into the long haul of my last deadline of the day.

- Freelance writing loves me. Got $100 worth of work I can probably do in 2 hours or less. In case you didn't know, I am a workaholic, although I am trying to master those tendencies.

- Patty and I are having a date on Saturday. We're going to the museum in the evening and listening to live music there and having a bit of wine and cheese. It will be lovely because we are always lovely.

- I should get on this birthday party thing. Which means a) telling people and b) cleaning the house. Probably in the opposite order. I am going to be 36 a week from Saturday! 36! Cripes! Still don't look it though, do I?

- I have entered the fray on the infamous Doctor Who forums. Well, I just posted an intro post is all. Used the polaroid of me as Jack for an avatar while being very conscious of gender, status and desirability drama and things I have heard about that forum. I used to be such the expert and yet also so incompetent at playing the cute girl card on the Internet, and I have to say that even if I didn't come with gender issues, the pure ickiness of that bullshit would have given me some.

- Anyway, For something I have no time for, I am over-thinking it. But then, that's what I do. I used to say I wanted to be paid for being clever -- I largely am. But maybe I just want to be paid for being neurotic. Come to think of it, I also largely am.

- On that note, I am deeply cognizant of all the weird ways (aside from the obvious ways) in which I have privilege lately, and how I have designed my life to suit my Libran tendencies. When you live lots of different lives all at once you have to make decisions about very few things. I hope that doesn't make me sound like a coward, because I loathe that possibility for myself more than perhaps anything.

- Even my mother things I look like Rachel Maddow when I have short hair. I should be her for Halloween. Rachel Maddow. Not my mom. I am envious of Maddow's CV in a way that makes me melancholy over the desires I had for my life when I was 14. I wonder who I would have been were I not such an underachiever as a teen. Probably not Rachel Maddow. Probably someone more typical than I am or more committed to faking the normalcy. It all worked out okay, I guess, even if my parents still ask me why I'm not on TV. I am happy.

- I won't actually be Rachel Maddow for Halloween. I have no plan on that score yet. Heh, if Michael and I were still the sort that might possibly do anything on Halloween together we could totally have been Maddow and Olberman. God, that is the most fucked realization perhaps EVER.

- I had to leave fencing early last night my head was pounding so badly. I'll write about it later.

- Hewitt reunion dinner? $85 a plate. Open bar, nice restaurant, but I find suddenly I don't care. Not even tiny bit. Although I regret that just a little. Because it would all be so funny. They usually have a tea at some point though. I'll do that I suppose. $85 a plate! Dear Hewitt, we are only mortal and the world's finances are collapsing and the great men we are all supposedly descended from would surely be jumping to their deaths were this actually our great Society past. $85 is like a memo to a lost world.

- Meanwhile, whoever you are, I probably still owe you email.

- Hey! GIP! When combined with the icon used on this post, I am irrationally yet predictably amused.

open letter

“I agree with the Bush administration that we take the fight to them,” she said. “We never again let them come onto our soil and try to destroy not only our democracy but communities like the community of New York. Never again. So, yes, I do agree with taking the fight to the terrorists and stopping them over there.”

Dear Sarah Palin:

I have news for you. New York is not a community. It is a city with over 7 million residents with a significantly higher number of people within its limits at any given time for both work and tourism. And so New York is actually made up of hundreds of communities. Thousands.

Let me tell you something about the communities of my city: You hate most of them. For we are immigrants and artists and people who don't necessarily live, love or worship like you do. We are the strangers you fear and vilify even though we're like you in almost every way that should actually matter. We want our families to be safe, our children to be well-educated, our jobs to be secure, and our futures to be full of potential. We want nice things and lower taxes and dignity and the freedom to pursue our hobbies and our passions and our devotions.

All of which means some pretty simple stuff:

We don't have a lot of patience for you. Most of us have learned more about the world greeting our neighbors on the stairs and in our corner stores than you've learned in your entire tenure as the governor of Alaska. Within a mile of each of our homes is almost invariably a mosque and a synagogue and a dozen different denominations of Christian church. And within our city are some of the best universities and research facilities in the world.

So when you talk about keeping my community safe when you don't even know its structure or its scale, I am aghast.

When you vilify the very things which make the motor of my city run and it shine as a beacon of hope to those who have always been told that different is wrong or that hope is not possible, you betray not just your ignorance of New York and of America and of the world, but you betray us -- real people who were wounded first by 9/11, yes, but who are now bone weary with the exhaustion at being exploited for political goals we cannot support or trust or even believe weren't explicitly created to destroy the very communities you gleefully refuse to understand, recognize or even see.

So stop using my city and stop thinking aggression makes you brave. It's a child's mistake, and it cheapens us all. I refuse to be a symbol of your dreamed upon wars. Or a target of them.