The Backstory [entries|friends|calendar] Jenn X [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

i am the captain and this is my ship [10 May 2007|06:19pm] [ mood | dumb ] I don't know myself anymore. I cannot quite wrest myself from this terrible idea. I feel like a bystander while the girl wearing my name is amok and not-making-sense, perennially and gaily stupefying herself. Well. This awful idea had begun to go away, at least, as I slowly found my footing and tried to understand that I am not static anyway, that changing contexts and landscapes and cities, even the change in my body and its shape, all together means that I too have to change, to roll with the punches. It should not be so frightening that the most I can do is ward myself against some nightmarish devolution, and point my cursor toward maturation and self-reliance. But that is frightening, not only when the aberrant parts are retaliating against the prudent parts, but also when I am not sure what to have for lunch or what time to set an alarm, so disconnected am I from what this girl wants, much less what she needs. There are basic things I do know. I know I am easily swayed, and wavering, that I am hungry, that I have a headache, that I feel like reading a mystery, and that I am probably about to. 7 comments|post comment

apartment-ridden [05 May 2007|06:16pm] [ mood | sick ] let me open this by telling you my friend's dog's name is dusty [16:20] yellowvinylrobot: hi there drinky [16:20] yellowvinylrobot: it's free comic book day [16:20] yellowvinylrobot: you should go get your sick friend some comic books [17:17] yellowvinylrobot: :( [17:17] my friend Mike: dusty can't read comics [17:17] yellowvinylrobot: THIS sick friend [17:17] my friend Mike: OH post comment

quality of life, growth [03 May 2007|02:53am] [ mood | cold ] [22:48] Tom G (GaimB0C9EACC): hello? [22:54] jennatar: i think what i am able to give used to be worth more [22:54] jennatar: it seems contrary to age [22:54] jennatar: over time, what i give is supposed to become more and more valuable, right? [22:55] jennatar: do you ever feel that, and worry you are becoming younger? [22:55] jennatar: or running out of time to become worth more? [23:24] jennatar: sigh 10 comments|post comment

[08 Feb 2007|10:24pm] I sure miss having a computer. I was on a roll for a minute there. post comment

An Abridged History [24 Nov 2006|04:34am] [ mood | melancholy ] My laptop tells me that the old neighbors have entered the digital age. I can see their SSID, and that their network is locked. I am thinking about walking over, handing them a $20, and begging to use the wireless till Sunday. I am surfing the dial-up internet in Opera, with images turned off, and realizing the importance of the "title=" tag. It's pretty sparse. I haven't been here in a year. Every time I peek in my childhood room, it stuns me with its changes. I begin to search for landmarks. There's a gap where the record player was, by where the beanbag chair was, shoved up against the drawer for stashing my teenagerhood's contraband reading. I pick through the candles, incense, some leafy things -- these are all located near one black light and one strobe light. I was really naive! I didn't get it then! It's no wonder people thought I smoked pot. A promo cassette, still in its cellophane, with Ben Lee on one side and Bis on the other. Here's a boxed copy of Maniac Mansion, with disk and manual but I moved the nuke codes and can't remember where. The really dumb books are shelved in a hidden place, inside a wardrobe. The crown jewel of the Pretty Shitty books is Lurlene McDaniel's shitty teen soap novels; in them, a girl either loses/is-in-danger-of-losing her boyfriend to a mysterious illness like leukemia or kidney trouble, or she herself is dying. I now point to these "Illness Melodrama" novels as the start of my hypochondria. I would like to punch Lurlene in the fucking teeth. Scholastic Book Fair can probably go fuck itself too. Here are several years' worth of Wired magazine, starting with March 1997. This is the issue about Push Technology (ICQ! Active Desktop! Someday it will be called an RSS feed). This issue also mentions HoriPro's Kyoko Date (the original Idoru), the rise and fall of TV show ReBoot, and briefly, the Neverhood. It's obviously a weird time for Wired: there are ads for Airwalks, Tag Heuer watches, Newbury Comics, and a Full Sail education. The April issue is about Doom, the game. A diskette with a file on it called "Book," from when I was 11 and 12. It's incredibly long. Shit! A peek into the file confirms what I always worried: I used to be smarter. A photograph from Europe. I am in a nice beige blouse (scoopneck) and skirt (broomstick), but with black leather ankle boots, a scruffy black cardigan (it has square buttons), and a small black backpack-purse. This is a pretty solid ensemble for 1995. I can't believe I'd already figured out how to dress a cute outfit down and into an ugly one. I am standing a full step above my aunt, and I am behind her, so that I am able to rest my forearm on top of her head, which I do. I appear to be surly, and I am at that juncture, in fact, super extra ridiculous surly. My aunt is squat and gleeful, in an ankle-length jean skirt and sneakers. She does not seem to notice or acknowledge the forearm on her head. During this trip to Europe, there is a young man from Mexico, traveling alone. He is six or seven years my senior, or more. When we say goodbye, he suddenly leans forward and kisses me on the cheek, a jerking, now-or-never movement. He steadily sends letters until a couple years later. I had forgotten till now. 1 comment|post comment

[13 Oct 2006|06:49pm] "I really, really don't feel good." "Well, you look like a thousand dollars." 1 comment|post comment

why we dated so long [08 Oct 2006|02:12am] "How did you do that?" my ex-boyfriend's new landlord asked me. Her land-partner sat across from me. I explained for a little while. "This is amazing!" she said. "And a little embarrassing! We'll change the subject." I nodded gratefully. "It happens!" her land-partner said, and promptly revisited the subject. -- After my ex-boyfriend was given his keys (the secret to a good-natured truce!), we put our heads together and determined we were starving, and that my amazing, embarrassing, subject-changer of a problem could wait. I knew I was tempting death when I ordered the spinach noodles, but they were delicious. I was rereading a book that is very good (its genre is listed on the back cover as "short short story"). The book isn't particularly thin but it's still comically small; it's bound weird, so that it barely opens unless you break the spine. So you have to wedge a finger between the pages you're trying to read, staring into the book's acute angle, almost like you're trying to read a cave painting on the wall of a cardboard tube. Finally I looked away from my word tunnel. "Hey," I said to him. "Do you mind that I'm reading with you here?" He frowned, partly because it had never come up, and maybe also because of my wording, a far cry from my more conventional "I hope you don't mind that I..." "Nope," he said. "You don't mind?" I asked again. "I don't feel like you're ignoring me," he said. And he laughed. I stared at him, startled. "What," he said. -- edit baader-meinhof phenomenon 1 comment|post comment

unfortunate living arrangement [04 Oct 2006|12:58pm] Lately I am growing increasingly frustrated with my apartment's utter refusal to begin resembling a home. In the past, I was able to apply tangible, tactile changes, and with tremendous rapidity, a certain where-stuff-goes ingenuity augmented by the power of paint, hot glue, discount fabric, ikea, well-concealed tape, spatial reasoning, and no cash. I could bend my environment to my will like some superhero of domesticity. Now it's all junk. The last of What I Need is somehow hidden within two very tall, very heavy boxes--broken, likely, or perhaps missing altogether--and crammed in somewheres between the refrigerator and the stove, behind the garbage and the broken-down mess of corrugation. I can't figure out where I am supposed to put this mess, but I need this mess to move so I can drag out these twin towers, and eventually, open them. I see there is a garbage chute that can accept exactly one paper wastebasket-full at a time, if the basket is poured slowly out like a coffee pot. The tedium hardly compares to the alternate route: disassembling the contents of my kitchen's very large, very full garbage bags, into smaller, manageable paper bags. Oh lord. This cannot be the only garbage dropoff site. But! I can't seem to be at home and not-late-to-somewhere while the sun is still up, so the detritus dropoff location itself still remains to be investigated. I don't know whether there is laundry in my building, or a tall ladder, or who the neighbors are--excepting the men downstairs, who are unfortunately top suspects in Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Kidnapped Bed Frame. I'm sure that if Martha Stewart were alive today, she would tell us that the key to a happy home is sorting. Sorting is the answer. When every sock finds its mate, every blouse is hung, every dish out of the sink dry and in a cupboard, knick-knacks arranged, then you'll find a bliss, a cosmic joy, where the latin kosmos literally means "harmonious order." Each thing is in its place, waiting for the doors to be thrown open, so that everything is in view all at once, handily compartmentalized and readily assessed. But unfortunately, everything, everything, it literally came all at once, usurping a painfully spartan limbo with the permanent concreteness of heavy wooden furniture, jumbo pots and pans, the weight of a hundred thousand pairs of shoes. I had learned to be okay with thinking these things were lost. Now, as I attempt to sort them, it is becoming clearer what should have been left behind. What concerns me more than my house, is the growing circumstance with my memory. I can't seem to grasp a thought and hold it; I can't remember where I put my to-do list, or what it might have said, or what it was, exactly, that was said the night before. Each time I get that horrible dull panic of something-was-left-undone but I can't quite think of what, some event must yet again step in to confirm that, indeed, there is a fire burning somewhere beneath a floorboard. So I am sorting thoughts, color-coding them, binding them into dense packets of index cards, and on every one of these cards penning and revising a separate list. I am carrying these cards around in an attempt to sort and prioritize. But what is so heartbreaking is how they don't hold up to examination, consistently proving themselves instead as woefully incomplete, somehow. There is a margin of error in the stacks of lists, you know, this tiny gap between every card, and somehow, between every pair of cards, another card of the same color is missing. Or unwritten completely. Or worse still, the most immediate and important list somehow fell among the blanks. 1 comment|post comment

That Whole Forbes Thing - A Primer, a Round-up, a Refresher [24 Aug 2006|06:09am] Two nights ago, I was padding around in my pajamas, feeling very weak and simpering, being unable to lift an assembled drawer from the floor, glumly looking for a drill bit again, thinking about all the things I was wishing some Man-Can-Do could come and do, maybe change some bulbs for me, fold some undies, some dishes, something. But then, somehow (I think it was when my eyes fell to the Needlepoint How-To by the bed, and I was like, "I'd rather learn needlepoint than WAIT! AM I GIVING UP ON THE DRESSER DRAWER BY DOING NEEDLEPOINT!" and then I was reeling from the existential metaphor that presented), I actually started thinking about how strange it was that feminism had regressed so far, that starting somewhere--maybe innocently enough in like some Melanie Griffith movie in the mid-80s--every "Lady Boss" character was characterized as an icy, brittle bitch. And there was another thought wedged in there, too, something having to do with "Let's be like Vice Magazine and ironically make fun of racism and sexism and xenophobia (and make fun especially of hair-gel hipsters, who, to the trained hipster eye, are totally discernible and separate from us blue-collar fake-working-class hipsters) because that would be funny, and then let's forget that's what we were doing--being funny--and somehow make the joke consistently enough that it becomes everyone's life philosophy, and let's do this especially a lot on the internet, because, you know, we all think that Maddox guy is really funny and we'd like to do the same thing, not understanding that sincere vitriol is kind of unfunny" ohhhhhh, something like that. Then, yesterday at work while I was on my Hardly Working Internet Break, I met all this buzz on the internet. And I have to tell you, I really marvelled that, by Michael Noer's definition, I am currently a "career girl," but three months ago when I was exactly as educated and therefore as bitchy as I am now, but inventing websites out of thin air and working in an awesome toy gallery and writing on-the-side, I was a... what does he call it? Something like a "bumblefuck cash register" girl? WELL TAG MY LAPEL "POLLY" AND COLOR ME STARTLED! By the way. One thing I gleaned from retail is, the bigger you smile, the more strangers will think you're an imbecile. It's its own kind of Helpful. Well, whatever. Take a load off, spit that gum out, stick it behind your ear, change the ribbon on your ... Steinway?... and enjoy! Don't Marry Career Women - pulled from the internet for like fifteen hours today, and then returned to the internet with (very possibly some editing, but also...!) a tacked-on, shittily-written rebuttal (by a GIRL!) that loses its terrific fire (I'm sorry, I think I meant "moxie!!") around sentence number three. Don't Marry Career Women "CLASSIC" - The googlecache of the article in question Nine Reasons to Steer Clear of Career Women - A marvelously infuriating, completely hilarious pictorial that accompanied the original Forbes article. Aaaaaand it's been totally removed from the internet. And it's probably not coming back. Boo! Hoping to find a cache or mirror of "Nine Reasons." Its text and text only is here BoingBoing Gawker Gawker CliffNotes Investigating the Annals of Michael Noer's Misogyny - If you've staked your entire journalism career in it, then yeah! Don't stop now! Unfortunately, the Noer article in question ("The Economics of Prostitution," or, why it's more fiscally feasible to pay for tail than to invest in a relationship) has also vanished from the internet. That doesn't mean it isn't cached. Ah-ha! The Economics of Prostitution "CLASSIC" Another LJ Roundup, posted in case the original article wasn't coming back to the internet Salon, freshly published. They noticed the Forbes' articles' conspicuous absence. Oh good, I thought it was just me. Here's a bit from Salon. The furor over "Don't Marry Career Women" is a testament to the speed of an angry blogosphere, but also to the anachronistic and wholly outrageous tone of the article. It was easy to wonder how we had traveled through space and time to a moment at which it was OK to publish this kind of thing. Was it a result of the recent press success of Caitlin Flanagan, who urged women to stay at home and service their spouses? Was it the repeated chirruping of David Brooks and John Tierney about how educated women will end up lonely spinsters? Had our sense of what passes for enlightened thought eroded so steadily that at last some twerp at Forbes was able to just explode it without any of his bosses even noticing for a while? Salon's actually a fantastic resource for finding overviews of "blogosphere outrage" and breaking news about JT LeRoy's identity and shit like that. Linda Hirshman, in the Salon article, makes a really interesting point. A piece like Noer's, which assumed that men are not capable of changing, not capable, say, of taking on more "non-market" domestic work or being otherwise equal partners who enjoy robust relationships, is, Hirshman argued, "very misanthropic and anti-male." 32 comments|post comment

hygiene, hygiene, lemonade [17 Aug 2006|04:22pm] I felt really frumpy when I was walking up to work. I think I was frowning. A coworker waved to me. I waved back and marched up to her. "You seem happier now that you have your new place," she said. It occurred to me that maybe by happier she meant "cleaner." Either way, the secret is all the bubble baths I've been taking. Having to stand to bathe was such a pain. 8 comments|post comment

Back from the Dead! [07 Aug 2006|11:18pm] I wrote lyrics in my head on the walk to work today, which I haven't done in awhile. And, since this is the best place to post lyrics on the internet, I will. For those uninitiated--they catch the eyes of ladies a little different in Texas (jk! jk!). To be sung breathlessly, over the original bossa nova beat: Small and wan and thin and scandalous The girl from Ipanema's in Dallas And when she passes Each cowboy goes, "Yee-haw!" When she walks it's like a two-step In too-tight wranglers, with buckle loosened, And when she passes Each cowboy goes, "Yee-haw!" Ooh...! Bubba opens a Coors Lite How...! can he lure her home tonight Yes...! Roofies in her Diet Rite But each time, when he doses her drink She pours it out in the sink Frail and young and so boot-scootin' The girl from Ipanema's in Houston But when he doses her glass She just doesn't drink *bridge, repeat last two stanzas* She just doesn't drink... No, she doesn't drink... She doesn't drink... She won't drink her drink... deleted variation: Ooh...! Joe Bob opens a Miller How...! can he get all up in her Yes...! Mix some drugs in her dinner OKAY that's when I creeped myself out, and stopped. Next version will be about Chicago, and might include stanzas about like punching and greyness and snow stains tracked all over hardwood floors. 14 comments|post comment

ah, there you are [20 May 2006|08:40am] i'm moving away. please say hello before i go. 16 comments|post comment

not a potato [24 Oct 2005|01:24am] "That makes me think of this one joke I really like, about the word 'potato'," I said to Gabriel. "How does it go?" he asked. "I can't tell it now," I said. "The punchline is actually 'potato.'" "What?" "I'll tell you it sometime soon," I told him. "Once I've forgotten about it?" Gabriel asked. "Yes," I said. "Well, I'll tell you a bunch of jokes in the interim, so you won't know when the potato joke is coming." "Okay," said Gabriel. "Okay," I agreed. "Knock, knock." ... "Okay," I said to Gabriel, "I'm going to tell you one of Jeff's favorite jokes." I was driving him home from the diner. "Oh, no," Gabriel said, "I've actually--" "'I was walking along the beach, when I found a magical genie's lamp partly buried in the sand?' Not a pirate joke?" "Oh," Gabriel nodded, "not this one. I was thinking of the pirate joke." "So," I said. "I was walking along the beach, when I found a magical genie's lamp partly buried in the sand. And I thought, what the hey, and I picked it up, dusted it off, rubbed it, and a genie came out. And he said, you have three wishes, and I said okay. And so, for my first wish, I wished for a million dollars. "And there was a puff of purple smoke and some twinkling," I went on, "and sure enough, in the sand, there was an open briefcase with what appeared to be a million dollars. Huh. Okay, wait, I'm going to circle the block again." "Okay." "So, for my second wish," I said, turning left, "I wished for a beautiful wife. And there was another puff of smoke, and as the smoke cleared, I saw her: a woman who looked like a supermodel, wearing a ring, standing beside a minister who was waving a marriage license in one hand. "And, for my third wish," I said. I stopped. I braked before slowly rolling forward over a speed bump. "And, for my third wish," I started again. I frowned. "You forgot the punch line?" Gabriel asked me. "Worse," I told him. "I left out the whole setup. It's going to make even less sense. Oh well, here's the punchline anyway. 'For my third wish, and I think this is where I went wrong, I asked for a giant orange for a head.'" Gabriel blinked. "So," I continued, "this guy walks into a bar. And it's clear to everybody that he has a giant orange for a head. And he goes to the bar counter, sits at a stool, and the bartender, he tries not to say anything. But finally he's like, 'Sir, I couldn't help but notice you have a giant orange for a head?' And the guy's like, 'Funny story. I was walking along the beach, when I found a lamp partly buried in the sand...'" I braked at Gabriel's front door and looked at him. He looked back at me. He burst out laughing. "Oh my god!" Gabriel said. "I'm sorry I forgot the beginning," I said. "I'm tired." "It was cinematic," Gabriel said, "it was like Memento." 7 comments|post comment

Coconut [16 Oct 2005|06:25pm] A variation on the game of Mercy; a schoolyard display of exemplary pain threshholds. Initiating Play: One combatant initiates the battle for honor and implicates his opponent's wussiness, by conveying the "flick-finger," where (usually) the middle finger is braced against the thumb. The gauntlet is thrown. With no choice but to accept, combatant #2 extends his hands right-over-left, cupping them so that the hands and knuckles will make a satisfyingly resonant "coconut" noise when flicked. Combatant #1 flicks the knuckles or fingertips of Combatant #2. If #2 does not register any pain (so much as a flicker of discomfort crossing the face will denote defeat) they trade positions, where #2 assumes the "flick finger" and #1 assumes the "coconut." Strategem: For a show of bravado, flicking the coconut just beneath or above the knuckles should result in the loveliest coconut sound, eliciting muffled gasps of awe from classmates. However, better coconut sounds usually mean less pain. A faster route to the Win may entail lightly flicking the tips of the fingers or the very tops of the knuckles. Meatheads, unable to grasp this strategy, often exhaust themselves in trying to produce deep "coconut" sounds with fervent, ham-handed flicking. This gives the nerds an opportunity for schoolyard victory. For the girls of the schoolyard, this game is a wonderful way to dispel grade school misogyny, because it has more to do with projected stoicism than with anything else. Therefore, any young lady with willpower and nerves of steel can hustle her way to victory, leaving emasculated boys strewn in her wake. One Missed Flick: Should a combatant with poor depth perception flick at the coconut and ACTUALLY MISS, flicking away at nothing but air, he shall resume the coconut position and be subjected to THREE flicks. This is usually the juncture at which the game is won, as three flicks in succession are significantly less bearable. Winning the Game: Although a complete wimp may cop out of the game by crying out, "Mercy," "Uncle," or the less graceful "OW!" any audible or facial indication of pain or fear is a gesture of defeat. This nuance of the game often leads to one combatant announcing his victory ("I saw that! It hurts! I won!") and protests from the other ("No way! Nuh uh! I didn't say anything!"). At this point, the outcome of the game is submitted to the schoolyard audience for assessment ("Thompkins, you jerk, everyone saw you flinch!"). Game's End: The game is cut short when there is a Win, or when any authority figure ventures near. In the case of the latter, one combatant scoffs to the other, so that all may hear, "We'll finish this later." Then the classmates scatter. 5 comments|post comment

open letter [15 Jul 2005|03:09am] To: The Internet < internet@internet.com.net.org.uk.biz > From: Jenn F. < jenn @ manufacturing mystique . com > Subject: Oops! Message: OMG I FORGOT ABOUT YOU FOR 1000000 YEARS I WILL COME BACK SOON cc: The Phone cc: The Email cc: US Postal Service cc: Social Life 8 comments|post comment

Lost in Translation game [22 Apr 2005|01:18am] From sogi. Sweet. 1. Take the lyrics to a favorite song. 2. Go to [Google Language Tools], translate the lyrics into German, then from German to French, and finally from French back into English. Google Translate. 3. Post the results verbatim. 4. Invite friends to guess the song based on the interesting new lyrics Ahem. Here are some [huge hint!] karaoke favorites. * you a durable truth Plaetzchen with long a history to good break the little heart like that in me. It is you show a OK, us, as you do it. placed in top your Herzoegen, you can have arrived to the bottom us. strike me with your best shooting. Fire far. and Queest, which arrived in the losers all this season of the yearly? Each time, if I receive at the thought, where ' D disappear it? If I woke myself, rolled the mummy and the dad on the couch. Numbers, rock and roll roles. Meringue received my plates outside. Mommy well. Dad well. They seem just strange. Delivery. Delivery. But you give not far. FAR! Michael Flavor will know both of these on sight, guaranteed. *snort* "Meringue received my plates outside." What is that? 15 comments|post comment

[21 Apr 2005|12:30am] From the IMDB user comments for Krippendorf's Tribe (1998): If you're looking for a movie to watch Richard Dreyfuss, try Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, it was better written. That made me laugh out loud. Seriously? Tom Stoppard is a better writer than the dude who typed up Three Men and a Little Lady?? Ohhhh why am I such an asshole. 11 comments|post comment

I love you guys. Rock and roll to you both. [01 Apr 2005|01:58am] 38 and 37 years old. My heart is heavy. 5 comments|post comment

A Performance of Sleep... [14 Mar 2005|04:27pm] I'm in this! Come see! Live Action Cartoonists and PAC/edge 2005 present performance of sleep in one long act without intermission march 12-april 9 fridays at 7pm & saturdays at 10pm ticketmaster 312-902-1500 tickets festival info 773-PAC-LINE admission $15 In this multimedia performance, Live Action Cartoonists will draw murals, play basketball, interrogate a panda, and let vegetables die all in hopes of understanding the strange metaphorical relationship between sleep and death. PAC/edge Performance Festival Athenaeum Theatre 2936 North Southport Ave 6 comments|post comment

Dreams and nightmares. [11 Mar 2005|01:10am] I can't remember what this morning's was all about, except that it woke me up. Last week, or the week before, was the one where a Simon Cowell lookalike named Nigel, was killing off would-be American Idols umbrella-corporation style, via zombie virus. Then the angry zombies tried to kill other singers in a Resident Evil free-for-all. The next night, I had a horrible dream about cell phone calls getting rerouted to alternate dimensions. Something about corporations and their funny, costly ideas of self-improvement. I'm thinking about this again because, today, I listened to a weird voicemail in which the caller asked me to show a house. Show a house? I'm thinking about calling back and A) telling her she called the wrong number, or B) agreeing to show the house, and when? 1 comment|post comment

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