Apocalist

Because my brain is currently overworked due to the coming dissertation defense (Friday!), I have been less...writey. Do you see what happened there? I invented a word. It's a word that doesn't need to exist, but my vocabulary is leaving me, so instead of whatever the word or words are that would convey being "writey" I just used "writey."

Aaaanywayz...I made this list in my head and thought it was enough for a post.  It's influenced by my recent read of the Hunger Games trilogy, as well as screenings of COINTELPRO and Weather Underground documentaries. Oh, and then I watched Man vs. Food.

Things I need to get done before the apocalypse:

1. Lasik, so I'm not sightless once my glasses break.

2. Learn how to box, fight, defend myself.

3. Learn survival skills. Like how to shave your legs using implements found in nature.

4. Learn how to pick locks.

5. Stockpile water purification tablets.

6. Also stockpile duct tape.

7. I should probably get a second battery for my laptop.

8. Relearn how to shoot a gun (I think I left that hobby behind at around 11)

9. Come up with a really cool apocalypse nickname. Something sweet, but could also be ferocious.

10. View some Youtube videos about how to start a fire, hide food from bears, and what to use as toilet paper.

11. Stockpile tampons and pads. And toilet paper.

12. Get some books on telling the difference between poisonous food and not poisonous food.

13. Learn gardening.

14. Learn how to make vodka from potatoes.

15. Work on my horrible aim.

16. Buy a megaphone. People with megaphones are totally the key people in a group. Megaphone=power.

17. Figure out what part of the country would be the least desperate and cutthroat in the event of an apocalypse.

18. Start acquiring apocalypse-friendly wardrobe items. This includes cargo pants that don't make me look fat, and hats that don't squeeze my ears or itch my forehead.

19. Learn morse code.

20. Stop saying "sorry" so much.

Anything I should add?

Night Turns Into Day

All of the art in this post is by Natalie Dee

Mornings are tough for the unemployed. Sure, at first you're getting up at a decent hour, showering and getting dressed, making coffee, having a bowl of cereal, checking email and looking for jobs. Then you start staying up later and watching movies until midnight on a Wednesday, so you get up a little later on Thursday. You still make coffee, get that bowl of cereal, look for jobs, writing, what have you, but just a little later. And maybe you save the shower for mid-morning.

You figure out that this could be over any day now. You could get a 9-5 and have to be up when it's still dark out. I mean, like that could happen tomorrow! So you let yourself enjoy a little late night reading and when the bed looks so warm and inviting after taking the dog for a his morning walk, you feel like you should take advantage of this beautiful time and snuggle up with a dog that also looooves sleeping in.

You say to yourself, "don't feel guilty, when you're working this will be a fond memory." You try to push away the realization that while snuggling, you are also anxious, because you really don't have to leave the house today, and that feels weird. 

You start to get a little bummed out when you wake up because there's nowhere to rush off to, so you sleep in more and breakfast starts to look a lot like lunch. I swear, I have had days where I get a bunch of stuff done in the morning and keep going going all day. Writing, doing bills, figuring out how to get medical care,  junk like that. And then I'll have a totally lazy day where I get up late and take a nap! I have so much time now and it feels like I'm either too anxious to enjoy it. Anxiety, by the way, does not make for good writing. My writing has been really sloppy and I've had the hardest time getting down my thoughts on paper the way I see them in my head. I need a reset button. I'd like to reset to the feeling I had when the apartment was finally free of the last box and my hopes were ridiculously high.

What if I start to get really odd from not having regular decent work relationship contact with people? Like how professors get when they go on sabbaticals that involve researching Civil War-era documents in a library in some small town. I remember one professor I knew looked confused when I said hello after a sabbatical. Not because they didn't know me, but because the situation of being talked to while they were thinking and processing was a strain.

What I'm basically saying here is that I'm not doing bad, but I'm not really doing good. I'm doing OK.

On days where I'm just OK, I'm less likely to post. I've hit a strange point, and not only because it is 3am on a Tuesday (or technically Wednesday). Though in retrospect, maybe check-ins with my psyche shouldn't be done at the witching hour. But having nothing new to write about...sucks. Here's hoping things change soon. I mean, it's Dracula Month so I have that going on. But it would be cool for things to start looking up on any of my fronts, Universe. Yeah, I called the Universe out just now, so what?

Ok, rambletron 3000 has been powered down.....

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you all about my magical adventures in the nation's first library? Where you can almost hear the ghosts of library patron freaks of the distant past....

Schools Out for Summer!

I'm back folks!

I am done with grading and ready to take on the summer months. As you know, I'm making progress on the dissertation as part of "Go 2009." So that's foremost on my list of things to do.

In another bit of good news, my husband, M. got into an art program. He's getting an AA in graphic design from Platt College, and I'm super proud of him for going back to school. He already has a B.A. in (you guessed it) American Studies, so this is a new avenue for him, but I think he'll do very well. Looks like he has a bunch of cool classes lined up like "life drawing" and all kinds of Photoshop and Illustrator classes. I'm totally going to be piggy-backing on that learnin' for my own stuff. He hopes to eventually go back to the skateboarding industry with his skills.

So, I say all that to tell you that he'll be gone in the mornings all summer. I should be able to get some nice work done in silence in the mornings. I plan to work until noon each day, even if it's on something tedious like formatting or graphs. Who knows, maybe I'll finish this damn thing?

Now, if you know me, you know that I have a penchant for "side projects." This is because my mind is constantly humming and I can't like, go to the beach and just lay out. Even when I do that, I have to bring 4 magazines. And one of them is probably a "thinker" magazine that I read with intensity. So what are my side projects then? I have decided to limit them to two, which is really, really good, I swear.

#1 - The cookbook. I have been transcribing my grandmother's old recipes she left behind and will be working on that more steadily this summer. Also I will be doing a little bit of research on communist and post-communist foodways. This is a project I've been working on for some time with my friend Justine. We're gonna pitch this sucker to a real publishing house, maybe a university publisher, and I would just love to see it be something, even something small. I've been wanting to make the food too. Maybe you'll see some preliminary photos here!

#2 - A comic book. I am all fascinated by comics lately, since I got hooked on the Buffy comic that takes up where the last episode left off. Plus, I used to love zines and weird alternative comics back in the day when Tower Records existed. Combine that with alI the research on vampires I've been doing and I am suddenly in a storytelling mood. So I'm going to start working on a comic book, that way I can get my artsy jones taken care of (I can't be all academic or my brain will starve). If I like what I make (and that's a big if), I might make a website for it, since it will probably never see the light of day otherwise. So maybe you'll see my stuff!

Does it look like Sweet Lady will spend any time this summer out of doors? Don't worry, I will on occasion go to the beach, walk my dog, and walk through parking lots to my car. That's enough, right?

Am I writing three books this summer? Probably not, but I hope to at least get a bulk of the dissertation done, submit a proposal for the cookbook, and have a couple chapters of my comic story up online. I have three glorious months without teaching, so I gotta make the most of it, right?

P.S. I finished the book version of Let the Right One In (awesome painting below by Tom Humberstone). Very, very good. But I still don't get the bit about Eli's egg puzzle. Why is it worth so much? What is it?



P.S.S. California is officially one of the more backwards states in the country.