I've started making it a habit to take a walk in the garden in the evenings at twilight. I only really get out there maybe twice a week because I've been nervous about who "owns" the garden and if it was ok for me to be out there. Tonight I was going to sit and write for a while, but I met a woman and her dog out there. She hasn't been living here much longer than I have, but she and her husband have been gardening in the garden. She said that it was anarchy there and that I was free to take tomatoes, peppers, squashes and herbs. She also pointed out two plots that were empty that I could take over. One plot is pretty empty and desolate looking and the other is full of weeds and mystery plants. I'm going to start with the sad empty plot right away. I'm going to see about rosemary, lemon balm and heather.

In other news, I've been sick. I thought it was all just stress from moving, but it's been way too long to be stress. It seems that I was having a reaction to one of the prescriptions I'm taking. This is actually the second time that I've had to lower the dosage of this particular medicine because it was making me crazy. I got to see a new doctor at Kaiser. Kaiser seems pretty awesome and accessible, but the doctor didn't make a great first impression on me. First of all I'm kind of scared and unfamiliar with modern medicine because I didn't have it growing up. My parents had this weird thing about not believing in modern medicine, so I never took OTC medicines as a kid and I rarely saw a doctor. I was also largely uninsured during my childhood, but then when my family did finally get a doctor she was an O.D. instead of a M.D. I'm still very much trying to overcome this whole idea of medicines won't help and only you can heal yourself. My mother's cancer went undiagnosed and untreated for at least six months because she was just doing home remedies and self diagnosis. I really prefer acupuncture and natural remedies, but I really need to keep on top of seeing the doctor and taking advantage of everything that modern medicine has to offer. On Monday I get blood tests and they're testing me for celiac sprue again. I'm really excited because I really need that diagnosis. I went gluten-free years before I ever saw a doctor about my problems and heard about celiac. The blood test for it measures the immune reaction to gluten in the body. Since I wasn't eating gluten when the testing was done I didn't have the immune reaction and didn't test positive for it. On Sunday I'm going to take a chance to enjoy all the floury goodies I can in order to get my body to have that immune reaction so I can finally test positive. I've been trying to decide what sort of baked goods I want to eat. I'm going to do a bagel and cake for sure. I'd like to find some fancy bread and have a sandwich. I thought about waffle or pancakes. I probably can't do a croissant because of all the dairy. Maybe samosas and a burrito. Perhaps a beer? I never really liked beer all that much, but if I'm going to be making myself ill with wheat-based food I might as well be drunk on wheat-based beer too. What other flour-based things do I need to eat because it might be my only chance to ever eat them again?

I just got back from the John Waters show at the Castro Theatre. I had never seen him live, and I'm not a crazy fangirl, but I do believe in corrupting youth and the various sorts of freespirited things depicted in his movies. It was pretty good! I never went through that teenage stage of watching John Waters movies a lot. I honestly don't even remember when I first heard about him, but I don't think his movies were widely available in Indiana. Actually I take that back. I remember seeing Cecil B. Demented and I might have seen it in the theatre, but I might have already been in California at that time. The Castro Theatre is pretty awesome and the crowd was perfect but a little short on drag queens. I would say that John was looking well, but I was pretty far in the back and I couldn't really tell. I couldn't even see his mustache clearly. These new contacts are a lot better than my old ones, but you know. It is also fantastic to have a friend to see live shows with. I just don't get out to these things unless I have someone to go with. I was really into theatre and opera for a long time, but then I stopped getting a student discount. I also love dance, but I have yet to find someone who wants to see dance performances with me. When I was dancing San Francisco was the largest dance scene in the US, so I had the opportunity to see some really fantastic performances. I don't know if SF is still the largest dance scene or not, but I still want to see dance. Anyone interested??

I've been processing some emotional things and I'm having trouble talking about it. So I've been staying in and not staying in contact very well. I'm reaching a point where things are clear enough that I can talk about, so that's a good thing. I feel so busy and I feel like I'm falling behind on my work, so I might not be getting out much, but maybe.

Yesterday I went to Ikea to buy some hangers and glass containers, and a little plant caught my eye. It's something vaguely ivy-ish and there was no information on exactly what it was. I'm assuming that it will make a good houseplant because there was a whole shelf of these things sitting in the middle of Ikea. It's not like a garden store. I put it on the kitchen table. I'm going to need to put the poor little guy in a real pot soon. There's another houseplant in the studio. Bossman was going to take it home with him because he was concerned that it wasn't doing well and wasn't getting enough light. The plant is doing quite well, in spite of always forgetting to water it. So that plant will stay here in the studio with me. It's nice to be growing things that aren't mold in the house. I'd like to grow lemon balm but I don't know if it would make a good houseplant.

Friday night Kevin had invited me out to see The Residents. I had never heard of them, and vaguely remembered a punk band by the same name, but he said they were cool artsy and put on a good show. He told me about them and got me all excited about this show months ago. Not so much. We were both falling asleep during the show. It was apparently the premier of this new show they were doing, but it was pretty awful. The stage looked like typical buringman camps, minus the dust. The show was a guy that was supposed to be a crazy grizzled old man jumping around stage, first wearing a blanket and then wearing a bunny suit, having some sort of psychotic episode. I think we all figured out that he killed his brother after the first two or three songs. It wasn't particularly innovative or creative, as I had been lead to believe The Residents would be. It was worse and less creative than anything at buriningman, and I've really come to hate burngingman. And one of the The Residents is a chick. I swear. Kevin thinks so too and he's seen them more than once! I don't know how people can miss these things. Also, when they did their encore, the four "men" on stage were different from the four "men" that performed the show. The one that I suspected to be a woman was replaced by someone who was certainly not a woman. I can see their gimmick and how it would be amusing and could lend itself to more interesting things. This show, however, and boring. We both were falling asleep. I could have been a million other places on Friday night!!!

Saturday was Carrie and Claudia's wedding and it was gorgeous. I have never liked weddings, or birthdays for that matter. I was a feminist pretty early on in my life, and all the weddings I saw were horrible regurgitation of irrelevant traditions and patriarchal nonsense. Also, all the couples I saw married were divorced pretty quickly. Like within 1-3 years. I always had a horrible time at weddings because it was disappointing on a number of levels. I really came to loathe weddings and I swore that I would never be married. This wedding changed all that. First of all, it is amazing and wonderful to see a same sex couple that have been together for nine years finally be able to marry like any straight couple who met two days ago in Vegas. Their minister was awesome and I need to get a copy of the ceremony because it was all about not making marriage about ownership and possession. The part about how she did not have the authority to sanctify the marriage because only the couple themselves can do that in their hearts was particularly beautiful. And it was a great party. Everything was so beautiful and simple. No need to be a bridezilla and have a pretty pretty princess wedding that costs more than a house when something so simple can be more meaningful and moving. I want to have a big fancy party for myself. Who knows when I'll have the money or occasion to do something like that. I've already finished college, and refused a party for that. I'm not likely to ever marry. Maybe I'll just throw myself a big birthday party or something like that. For a moment I thought about doing a big Halloween party in my new place, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I'll do a big Christmas party instead I think. Maybe do a combination birthday and Christmas party.

"No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement; it is a dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude". James Connolly, 1907

"There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama" by Shay Black of http://www.black-brothers.com/ at The Starry Plough In Berkeley

Dear lazywebs,

how the hell do I get pictures off my iphone and saved on my hard drive??

the last three song on random shuffle:
Black Rose by Punx Soundcheck
Rosegarden Funeral of Sores by Bauhaus
A Rose in Hell by Sol Invictus

What's up with the weird rose songs?? Do I really just have enough rose titled songs that it's statistically possible to get three in a row? I only have 11 songs with rose in the title.

And as I listen on random I'm hearing all sorts of songs that I didn't know I had and artists that I've never heard of. I have no idea where some of this stuff came from, and I certainly didn't download it. My mp3s must be breeding or something.

And sort of random update: I took the sleeping pills again and they did not make me sleep 12 hours. So that period of sleeping 12 hours a day and not being physically able to keep myself awake was not caused by any of prescriptions. I still have no clue what's going on or how to predict or prevent it.

I got to bed at 3am last night, and then at 6:30am a strange noise woke me up. It sounded like someone was throwing hundreds of tennis balls around the studio. I stayed in bed for a few minutes trying to figure out what it was, and I decided that it must be mice running around. I'm horrified but I jumped out of bed expecting to see mice coming down the stairs. There was nothing. The noise was all over, so i went upstairs guessing that it was mice in the walls. I'm terrified and confused and only half awake and naked and this horrible noise is everywhere. When I get upstairs it becomes clear that the noise is outside the building on the roof, so I figure it must be hail, which is certainly unusual for this area. Satisfied with my hail theory I go to the bathroom and then start to head back to bed. On my way through the kitchen I notice bird feet on my sky light. I start to think that with all that noise maybe someone put chickens on the roof. No clue why or how someone would put chickens on the roof but I knew it had to be a lot of big birds out there. I open the sky light and I hear the happy cawing of crows and see them walk by. There must have been a hundred or more crows out there, and apparently they were smashing fruit or nuts on the roof, which would explain the tennis ball noises. It was insane. When I said I missed seeing birds around the neighborhood I didn't expect to have hundreds of crows smashing things on my roof at 6:30am on a Saturday.

last night I was unpacking some stuff and came across the old copy of Tattoo Savage magazine that my dead boyfriend had been in. When I was in high school I dated a tattoo artist and he died from a heroin overdose shortly after I moved to California. I knew that if he didn't call for two weeks that he was probably dead or in jail. It was exactly two weeks when I got the call from a friend at the wake. October will be the nine year anniversary. Reading through this old magazine, I realized that he was my age when he died. I always thought of him as being older, and now he's not. Somehow over the years I managed to forget his age altogether. It's really something to think about, dying at this age. All the accomplishments and things not yet accomplished. It still hurts a lot of think of him. When a junkie dies nobody has anything nice to say, and too many people took the opportunity to tell me all the horrible things they thought about him. I was going to do something special in his memory this year because nine is a special number.

Last night I got a whole 5 hours of sleep, and then took a 1 hour nap late this afternoon. The rest of this week I've been sleeping a 8-10 hours a night and then napping for two hours early in the day. I was beginning to think that maybe 10-12 hours of sleep a day was just my normal. I feel fine today, so I think that clearly I need to deprive myself of sleep more often or something. We'll see if I can stay awake tonight.

I tried to register to vote at rock the vote, but it turns out they're harvesting email addresses!! And I have an ancient button from then that I still wear. I guess I have to fill out a form the old fashioned way. And find a nice Obama button instead of an old rock the vote button. I finally did decide that I like Obama. I'm just so sick of the news garbage that I had totally written off the whole election, but then a friend asked me to look something up about Obama on his website. It turns out he actually supports the sorts of things that I support, like the revolutionary idea that you should give jobs to ex-cons so they get off the streets,expand the use of the drug courts so that junkies can get clean rather than rotting away in prison, supporting unions (hello Walmart), and protecting women's health. I didn't expect to find a national level politician that actually represents me. I had given up on national politics because I didn't like any of them, and preferred to follow local and state politics instead.

Dear lazywebs,
I feel dumb. How do I sync my podcats to my iPhone? (but not all my other music and stuff)

ganked from qdot



I wish it were practical to have a bunny here. No nuclear lollipops though.

Instead of doing something useful, like sleep, last night I was up until 2ish doing laundry and watching DVRed reruns of Futurama. Then this morning Lash got me up early for breakfast and taking care of car stuff. We went by the mechanic, and the shop was closed of course. My car was parked out on the street and it appeared to be completely untouched. Lash took a look under the hood and confirmed that his diagnosis over the phone was correct. And it would be a job that takes a few hours depending on what sort of bolt was needed, yet the car had been sitting their untouched since Tuesday. It seems my car problems are really mechanic problems. If she knew she wasn't going to be able to do it she should have told me to take it somewhere else. Business is business. Lash and I stopped by the nice cash only mechanic and he said that if we had it towed over on Sunday he could take a look at it on Monday and if he had the parts he could fix it up on Tuesday. And now I just got home and I'm completely unprepared for tonight. I was hoping to make it out to the gothnic, but I'm also running a ritual for the women's group tonight, so I would have to leave the gothnic at 4:30ish and drive straight out to Newark. I need more time and a nap, so I'm skipping the gothnic. I'm sad because I wanted to see Michael and Tracy and Paula and all the people I haven't seen since Shrine days, but I guess I'll have to wait for the naval battle or something. However I have Lash's van for tonight, he gave me a bluetooth headset for my phone, I have a nifty cheapo FM transmitter so I can listen to my Zune in the car, and I also picked up my special blankets from the old place. They've were just about torn to pieces by the dogs, but their my special security blankets that make everything better when I curl up with them on the couch. The bluetooth headset isn't working so well. I have problems with anything that sits in the ear or clips on to the ear because of all my conch piercings. It hurts to wear the headset for too long, but it is a damn nice headset. I'm going to try to make it work, but I may end of having to get the speaker type bluetooth thing.

Someone in a bear suit playing on the Galveston beach in the hurricane http://www.khou.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=282017

Also, since I have the lou lou icon up, yesterday I got my order from Besame in the mail. They're totally reformulating their line, so everything is way discounted. I don't even know what sort of stock they have left. I picked up a noir red lipstick and a merlot lipstick. I've been wanting more dark lipstick, and I was hoping for an vintage dark color. It turns out that the noir red is the perfect 20's dark red that I've been wanting, even though the Besame site says that merlot is the more authentic color. I already had their carmine lipstick and it is the exact same color that Bette Davis wore in that Queen Elizabeth movie, and I love it a lot. I hope that their new line is just as nice. Though their 1930's mascara smells like gingerbread, and it's kind of disturbing to put something that smells cinnamony on your eyes. I hope they change that.

I got to bed early last night and slept for ten hours. I spent the morning cleaning the studio for a photographer that booked it. I wasn't able to confirm him, but I figured I needed to clean stuff anyway. I got tired so I decided to lay down and when he finally called he was in the ER. He's sending the money anyway, or so he says, but I'm not holding my breath. So then I slept another two hours. I hope that means my sleep problems are fixed and/or balanced out. Twelve hours a day is just sort of excessive. I've been trying to fix my sleep problems. I gave up caffeine again, not that I was drinking it daily anyway. Now that I have DVR I can record late shows and watch them earlier in the evening instead of staying up late.

ganked from shy_matsi Rice: I See White People from the Progressive Puppy Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opines, "I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State - and as a matter fact I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State - and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me. And that is just not acceptable. I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if black Americans are part of this great country."

Like African Americans were represented at the GOP Convention? Is that what you mean, Condi? From AJC: "One nonpartisan group, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, counted 36 black delegates this year, which would be 1.5 percent of the GOP delegates. David Bositis, who oversaw the study, said the party was not very cooperative in helping with numbers... But 36 would be the fewest black delegates at a GOP convention since 1964." Condi, when you aligned yourself with the party of rich old white men what did you expect? For all their talk of inclusiveness, Republicans can't seem to get their heads around racial diversity. Or any diversity, for that matter. - Max P. of the Progressive Puppy

The Numbers:
Republican National Convention: 36 of the 4,500 delegates and alternates seated on the convention floor are black
Democratic National Convention: nearly 1,100 of the 4,400 seated delegates on the convention floor are black

Wow. Would you believe those numbers!? It looks like the DNC has black delegates in proportion to number in the US population, as well it should be. The RNC... WTF!? Time warp!

In other news, the car has gone back to the shop. It was not surprising that the serpentine belt and tensioner would go. It was surprising to have it happen in the middle of the freeway at 1am coming home from Deathguild. It was the craziest sound. It took out the power steering, so I had a fun time getting off the freeway and getting home. Thank Goddess I was able to get it home and wasn't stuck in the middle of the freeway all half naked in my clubbing clothes. Ms. mechanic had said the serpentine belt looked wonky and the tensioner was probably bad, but I really just wanted the car back so I told her to fix it later. Now hopefully I can get it back for the weekend.

I've been working on my eating issues recently. I don't know what it is but my new living situation has really brought my eating issues to light. http://community.livejournal.com/womenofthemoon/34379.html I had considered dating again, but I think I'd rather heal my own issues this year instead of dealing with random strangers with baggage. Taking time out to care for myself and spending time with the friends and family I love is a good thing.

And my $pread magazine finally arrived. They mailed it out Aug 2 and it just now got forwarded to my new address. The people that run $pread are super nice and were very helpful in looking for my subscription and changing my address. I highly recommend the magazine.

I'm really tired. The heat is just getting to me. The studio gets so hot and stuffy because there really aren't any windows to open. Other people open their front doors, but the other night I had a dream that I left the front door open and people were stealing stuff while I was upstairs.

Things are going well I guess. I need to remember to get out of the house more often. I went out to House of Voodoo last night. Cat Club is much nicer than I remember it being. I guess they remodeled a few years back. It no longer smells like armpit and there are places to sit. However it is still on Folsom St. and right next door to some club that had limos pulling up all night. I used to think it would be fun to go to mainstream clubs, until I saw the price. One club I was at you had to buy a bottle in order to get a seat. You pay something like $60 for a bottle of alcohol. That's a lot of money and alcohol just to get a place to sit down. No clue what the entry price was because I was on the special invite list, but it must have been $20+. And never park on Folsom St. on a club night. People standing outside the club will sit on your cars.

I have the car back. She wants me to keep an eye on it because she's concerned that I might need some or all of my exhaust system replaced. I have to check back in with her in a week. When I picked up the car I gave her a pound of Martha Brothers coffee and she gave me a hug. I then promptly went to see my favorite client. I should have stopped at the liquor store on the way home. No bondage_a_gogo for me. I'm just going to bed. Friday night is Scott's birthday thing, so a bunch of us are meeting him up at Strangelove. Also, Fernando has come back from the dead, or someone scraped him up off the sidewalk or whatever, and he's DJing. I thought for sure he totally wrote off the goth scene and went to hip hop or something like that. I ran in to him at bondage_a_gogo at least a year or two ago, and he was still the same Fernando, if you know what I mean.

Any of veedub's crew want to go to Strangelove too?

SFO to Heathrow which is better, Virgin, BritishAirways or BMI. They all seem to accommodate vegan diets and gluten-free diets, but I haven't called to ask about vegan and gluten-free and peanut-free meals. I'm praying that I don't have to pack a damn picnic basket and get considerably drunk like I did last time I flew to the UK. I don't need to fly until June next year, but the prices for tickets are already $1000+ and I'm not waiting and getting stuck on some stupid US based airline again. Also, are Iceland Air and Icelandic Air the same airlines? Some sites use one name and others use the other, and it would be really stupid to have two airlines with such similar names.

I was hoping to do bondage_a_gogo tonight, but I'm still waiting to hear back about my car, and the other employee is coming over to dump things in the studio dumpster, and I'm really kinda tired right now.