One more and then I'll stop, I promise

(The following amusing exchange happened yesterday over IM when your heroine decided to explore the possibility of buying ringtones.)

kjpepper: getting Kenya ringtones is like branding GEEK! across my ass in large friendly capital letters, huh?
sydneycat: yes sweetie...for the love of god yes!
kjpepper: excellent. :D
kjpepper: and the theme from L&O would brand me a true addict...
sydneycat: L&O?
kjpepper: law and order
sydneycat: jesus fuck yes!
kjpepper: lol

In other news... actually there isn't any. I'm just kinda tired and dreading the fact that I have to give a training running on no coffee. I can already feel the headache coming on.

Musing

Note how that can be either what I'm doing or short for "amusing." I like it when words do things I like.

Weirdly interesting day so far, and not really for any major reason, but more for deep headspace and little physical annoyances sorts of reasons. As a result I left work today with an expression on my face that must have signalled "Deep in Angsty Thought" or something, because some guy yelled at me from across the street "Yo, why does everyone have this sad-ass face on this morning? Smile!" It startled me so much that I actually laughed. "Well, it is raining," I pointed out, and he waved that explanation off. "It's still a beautiful day, isn't it?" I had to concede the point, cause really, he did have one. Every day, after all, is a gift, and it's so easy to forget that. I thanked him for the reminder and went about my way, maybe thinking a little less hard, but still thinking. Even as I was getting wet. But I never mind getting rained on really. Humans are water-resistant.

( obligatory 'oh yeah! My Period!' thought, cut for graphic content )

Got lifts to and from my appointment in South Hadley this morning (ok, seriously, peeps, I need some more driving practice, who's with me? bueller?) and had fun conversations with R on the way down and Bosslady on the way up. Actually the one I remember most was the one from R commiserating on the manhattan private school thing. Granted in the ranking of private schools, UNIS is sorta occupying the uppity New Money position that the rest look down on, but we didn't care - shit, we didn't have much of a dress code, and that was pretty much all that mattered then. Not to mention that UNIS is 90% diplomats kids, so I think we definitely had the lock on diversity. You become colorblind as self-defense there - case in point, just before you graduate you have to go to the Senior Seminars where they basically sit down and tell you "okay, you do realize that everywhere else you're going to go is going to be mostly white, right?" So we had a couple of good laughs about how fucking snotty the whole scene was, and how UNIS always got ours by seriously dusting the region in athletics. Yeah buddy.

It made me think about growing up in New York though, and by extension thinking about how the city has changed since I left it. It's still home, and it occasionally calls me back, but it has changed quite a bit in the past decade or so from the city I admired and loved for all it's gritty Transmet-like personality to something kinda prepackaged and commercial. Somehow it's gotten more vulgar with the garish light displays everywhere now (not just Times Square) than it ever was with an entire street of porn houses on 42nd.

That's another thing, speaking of New York. friggin 9/11's on Saturday, and I'm supposed to go down and visit the folks this weekend. I'm seriously considering a raincheck, actually, even if it means picking up the toy later rather than sooner. I so do not want to be anywhere near New York on 9/11. I want to stay up here in Massachusetts and make fun of it from a distance. Yes, I said make fun of it. A national tragedy happened three years ago, and it took less than a year to make it into a joke. Four thousand people die, and how do we commemorate them? With four thousand cheap plastic flags, carnations and a completely unnecessary military campaign that's pretty much demonized the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world? Thanks, but no thanks. Somehow in light of that, sardonically commenting that in another couple of years it will be just another excuse for a day off and a barbecue seems much less irreverent than all that. Hell, I'm sure some of those people would be all about barbecue rather than what's actually happening. But I think I'm right though. I mean, case in point, how did rich white people know when it was okay to wear white to a picnic before Memorial Day?

Still, it's funny how things turn out. Everyone I know remembers where they were three years ago... ( Where I was, blah blah blah... )

Other odd reminders of the day? Later that night, beatgoddess, Monica and I went to Stop and Shop for some stuff, and I walked into the tow pipe of a pickup truck in the parking lot, gouging a quarter-inch hole out of my left shin. You can still kinda feel the hole under there, even though the skin's long healed. And hanging in our bathroom is a laminated printout of that day's Rotten.com front page. (worth clicking, it's actually pretty funny and scarily true, especially the last paragraph.) "Fucko Bazoo" and "completely batshit" remain favorite expressions around the Casita, and they've passed into the household lexicon by now.

So yeah, that's what my brain has been gnawing on today. Well, that, punctuated by the occasional "owww, my uterus" and some minor relationship headcrap that I think I was blowing way out of proportion due to seriously out of whack hormones. *sigh* the argument for going on regular baby repellent gets stronger every day. *rolleyes*

Cause fast food is obviously foreplay for us folk. What?

I just saw this infomercial/commercial for these Flavor Love CDs, put out by Burger King and AOL. And the commercial shows these black couples very sensuously eating Whoppers at each other to Brian McKnight.

Can I get a WTF up in here?

[xposted to blackfolk]

Something to think about

The following quote was bitten from someone else's LJ bio:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To her a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

"Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering need to create, create, create so that without this creating of music or poetry or books or something of meaning, her very breath is cut off from her. She must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency, she is not really alive unless she is creating."

- Pearl S. Buck

Yeah, that's about right. Of course, that quote is just screaming for a rebuttal from Hugh Brown Shü:

"I am an artist. I'm sensitive. I am so fucking sensitive. I care about the things that other people don't have time to deal with. I care about things you've never even thought of. I care about the things Gandhi didn't give a flying fuck about When I was seven I dislocated my own jaw...

"I create. I walk the line of abandonment, feel the sabre of despair, pierce my guts so my breath, when it arrives, flows through in bloody sprays of artistic struggle! I turn up the TV so Charles in Charge drowns out my screams of creative torment so as not to upset the neighbors! Until finally, I emerge from my lair with art.

"And it always sucks!"

It's fun to be a creative person and still have the ability to laugh at yourself even whilst dying of consumption in a garret somewhere and wearing a dumb looking frilly shirt. ;)

Shit, it's raining a lot.