More Life

I am loving Bleak House and half way through and making with the tears and shit but god YET ANOTHER WOMAN is like OH ESTHER I LOVE YOU--is Bleak House a porn? Because it seems like everyone's just here to deliver pizza or whatever, and suddenly, for no reason all. over. the main. female. Debbie Does Dallas was more believable/less obsessed with everyone being into Debbie/the Cheerleaders. I'm listening to it on audio and I just want a BOW CHIKKA BOW WOOOOOOW when the ACTUAL 'sexy french maid who used to be in love with your mom!! until your mom ditched her for a hot younger woman' rolls in to be like OH ESTHER--YOU DO IT FOR ME.

Eugh--this job, with this ap that took FOR FUCKING EVER (it was like, 5 essay questions, 2 forms, a special for-them cv with like 1000 words extra and a cover letter, all edited by Katy, and then by the QM job lady who was nice enough to look over them, then me again, then Katy again), closed today. I turned my ap in on time, and like two hours later--"sorry, we already filled this vacancy." Dude, like, take your ad down when you fill that shit. Don't waste my time. Also--why select someone before your official closing day? You clearly didn't fill it like an hour ago. Whatevs. Waste of tiiiiime. Also why the fuck is that like, acceptable to ask someone to do for a basic admin position? Or even helpful for you to know as an employer? But the academic admin positions are /all like that/, and not copy and pastable, for the most part, really--not without serious rewriting, anyway.

Also migraine.

The Bachelorette is Racist Against Interesting People
Queen Latifah and the Case for Not Coming Out
Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
The Dictator: Rape Jokes Are The New Rape Jokes
Plots from the unaired 8th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation: "TNG Season 8 ‏ @TNG_S8
Worf is trapped in a holodeck version of The Odyssey. Data & Geordi throw an epic party, have to hide the evidence before Picard gets home."

"TNG Season 8 ‏ @TNG_S8
Wesley's dino experiment mistakenly mixes with Riker's beard DNA, creating the sexy-but-dangerous Velociriker. Troi's mom tries to marry it."--totally true plot of a star trek episode

"TNG Season 8 ‏ @TNG_S8
Wes gets trapped in a bunker with an obnoxious child king. Riker wakes up on Risa with a lower back tattoo and no memory of his last 3 days."--and that

China Mieville: Punchable?
Matthew Norman: Blame the Greeks. They invented democracy
America’s Finest Educators Dance Bomb Their Students
Tig Notaro - Taylor Dayne

* I'm interested in broadening my reading for Purposes. What are your favorite UK-published (loosely defined) fantasy novels of 2011? #research

* Does anyone know a dead-simple website design program that I can use for free? Bearing in mind that I know like BASIC html mark up and how to navigate like, Web 2.0 interfaces, and nothing more. I could look up how to code some more simple shit, but that /cannot/ be the best means of going about this, and I doubt the result would look v. pro. I'd like to put together something totally unfancy for my former employers, with a main page with a photo, a header, and a links bar, an 'About the Staff' page (4ish photos), an 'About the Practice' page (maybe one photo), and some contact info, with a box in the page that can people can use to send him an email. I can probably read up on how to do that last once I know what program I can work with. If he wants more, I'll go from there. The thing just needs to be decently professional in appearance, built in something I can obtain for free (though I'm aware domain-name space won't be free--that's another thing I'll have to learn about) and for the site to accomplish these relatively simple tasks.

Once that's properly up, I can build him a FB page, a Linked-In profile, and a Twitter to correct his increasingly weird complete lack of web presence, then hand it over to his young receptionist or his young law-clerk to actually maintain.

An Eight-Year-Old's Dream Job: http://newyork.craigslist.org/wch/lab/2667823368.html

Spent all yesterday at a day-long job interview thing for a crummy 'zero-hour contract' HR job. Several stupid tasks and interviews. It was like a shitty, desperate, tragic X-Factor--well, more so--in which everyone there was qualified or over-qualified, and some of them hadn't worked for over a year. I got through to the final round and, today, got a follow-up rejection letter. Feel like the problem may have been that I was over-qualified (they sort of suggested this), and that other people were earning certificates and such in HR, whereas my CV clearly indicated this was not my eventual trajectory. Danny suggested I just start leaving qualifications off my CV to avoid this, as per today's Married to the Sea (http://www.marriedtothesea.com/102611/), but that seems dicey too, and just sad. A full day wasted, and the cost of getting there, for this measly little job I might have done in my sleep and barely even wanted, which I wasted time on and panted after in the most degrading fashion. *Eugh.*

Applied for a tutoring position with the people Tamara works for. And made four types of flavored pumpkin seeds: Original (butter and salt), Asian (sesame oil and dark soy glaze), Spicy (chili powder, cayenne, paprika) and Sweet (cinnamon, nutmeg, dark brown sugar and honey). Will take pictures. Would do things slightly different in future, but I like these as toppings on salads, compatible savory dishes, and deserts accordingly.

Sort of looking forward to Christmas: http://www.cathkidston.co.uk/images/assets/pdfs/Christmas%20Come%20Early.pdf

Hoping to make marzipan fruits from home-made marzipan as gifts for people who like marzipan, and also a christmas cake and a pudding this year.

This will be incoherent, it's 5 am and I am le tired.

Frustrating day. Woke up with a bit of a migraine, but dosed it off. Made sweet potato falafel and helped Katy hunt the gas meter a bit (it proved illusive, landlady's proxy had NO idea where it might be, had to email old roommate Rob).

BUT, from roommate Kasia, got some disturbing info--said Proxy-Doxy might be moving someone into the downstairs room. Now this is ODD, given that, at our meeting, we established that I could pick a friend the housemates were comfortable with to move in there, and it was implied this could be taken care of when the repairs to the house were complete (they're not yet).

Kasia said the landlady thought she might have someone for the downstairs. The landlords finding a tenant themselves has never happened in all three years of Rob's tenancy, and due to this, and also because the landlords had moved to America, Katy has moved into my room but isn't ON the lease. So if this person is some bosom chum of proxy, we face a REAL issue. I have no guilt on this score--the people are getting paid, and Katy and I and undertaking improvements and necessary cleaning, directing the builders to a silly degree, recruiting other tenants of good habits and facilitating their lease-signing processes (Jo, Phillippa, probably Peter later) and generally being excellent stewards of a property that had been allowed to fall into dilapidation. My parents' rentals were often trashed by vile occupiers, and I've seen and heard some dubious shit in the course of helping them/working for them, and this wouldn't make even my mercenary mother bat an eye. My role here is pretty similarly unpaid!Property Managery (apparently when I said 'I will never work for my mother ever ever again' I meant 'but I will find her clones on another continent and somehow wind up doing similar work for /them/, wooooo!'), but I didn't mind because it allowed me the control I needed. BUT if some little schmendrick comes in and whines about my girlfriend living with me, /well/. It puts the kibbosh on our cat-related plans for the mo, as well.

Also, just generally, I feel in a shared house that having no say over who the roommates are is--weird, creepy, etc. Invasive. Not what I signed on for, given my phone conversations, emails, and meeting with the landlady in which we discussed her preference that I have a group of friends in the house to create a feeling of mutual responsibility for it, etc. I know you can't spell 'non-consensual' without 'sensual', but bitch this was NOT my understanding when I signed the dotted line (of your poorly constructed contract with no rider-signature-line and thus little legitimacy/protection for /you/, what what WHAT were you thinking? *Sassy Gay Paralegal* Seriously though, don't c/p your contract together when you don't know what you're doing and haven't had anyone who does look it over, you wind up with some indefensible bullshit.).

We currently only have girls, and Peter I really like and trust, and it's not like I necessarily think every strange dude is not to BE trusted, but I don't get on with every random guy THAT well, I don't feel SUPER safe. The landlady says the potential new tenant is a student, she THINKS not my friend, and that she'll tell me more when she knows more. In a sense this is heartening: if she doesn't even know whether the potential tenant is the friend I was earlier told I could have in the downstairs bedroom, how close can they be/how likely is this person to rat us out? Yet how can the landlady not know this information? Where is this person coming from, if she doesn't know that? Say it's a friend of the landlords' family, so potentially like them Indian, from a relatively traditional background--how cool is she going to be with the lesbian relationship upstairs? Say it's a 17 year old raver, or a brat, or a studious SILENCE!!nazi, or, like my last flatmates, someone language-barrier-tastic?

I can work this out when it comes to it: if the child comes at all (which won't be immediate) (and given the family's general disorganization, I have my doubts, and I'll sweep in with alacrity to arrange an alternative candidate), and if she's not for winning, there's always saying 'my girlfriend's housing's fallen through and either she needs to share my room (and we can make arrangements to compensate you (though privately I'd rather not, this rent is sweet and I'm pretty dependent on it until my job improves or I get more student loans)) or, or I'll have to sublease and move out', or Katy 'living' elsewhere but actually just staying there like two nights a week.

I just hate having put Katy in a precarious situation, even if we can sort it. I didn't think I was being a chancer on this one, because Rob has had SO few problems for years. Even Katy's mom and mine, relatively stern-eyed ladies, smiled beneficently on the arrangement. Damn damn damn damn. There's nothing to do for it but wait, but I know I'll stew until I hear more.

So after that mess we went out to Anna's--Mexican was fine (kinda uninspiring, after the build-up, with the sort of blandness and limited ingredients I dislike about El Maguey-style commercial Mexican), got Anna coffee-syrups, then went to Eds for GOD AWFUL cheesecake I wrote them a 'come-to-jesus' note about on the back of a customer membership card and then pocketed because it was too mean to leave. I got violently ill--the migraine blossoming into a full and fruity nausea--and the bus home did me no favors. I proceeded to be Really Really Ill.

On a positive note, we watched like three episodes of Next Gen today! 'Inner Light' is next!

Too worried about stupid house shit to sleep, I applied to the last ten of this weeks' jobs. Too many landlady!emails today for my pleasure or productivity. :/ Talked to Bess--the audition posts are up! Yay.

I have hot fantasies about getting adequate notice before I have to go into work. A secretary calls and silkily intones, “could you do some open houses… next week?” “Oh,” I answer, shaky, breathy, surprised by the force of my desire, all trembling acquiescence, “yes, yes, YES! I AM AVAILABLE NEXT WEEK!”

But no. Woken from a solid sleep by my mom insisting I go show three properties in a row, preferably like, an hour ago. So if I could get on building a time machine, that would be best, but failing that, I should be in the car driving out towards Kansas City in under three minutes.

So the resulting process involves:

1) me trying in vain to find an outfit that I don’t despise,
2) cramming what looks like a plausible breakfast down my throat as I’m going to be working until 4:30 with no time for such fripperies,
3) realizing I’m completely out of gas, and
4) have to drive over to my dad’s office, where I’ve forgotten my purse,
5) my car refusing to start or jump until I find a battery charger it likes the color of,
6) having to take my sister and the kid she’s agreed to baby-sit to the pool,
7) begging my other sister to print me out directions and grab the keys from my mom’s office, where she too has been called in to work,
8) running into my father’s office with no explanation past the identical bemused expressions of he and his dog screaming something that may have resembled greetings and farewells to both,
9) getting gas,
10) picking up the papers and keys from my sister, and
11) getting stuck in an absolutely inexplicable traffic jam between Columbia and the Midway Exit. I mean, what? Since when is there a FULL-STOP traffic jam on that highway?

So I end up half an hour late, get to the house, and discover they’re the lovely, super-paranoid species of people that feels the need to get a sooper-dooper difficult to disarm security system for their house crammed thick with possessions no self-respecting thief would ever want to steal. Their decoration includes the world’s most heinous duvet covers. If I were a Scottish clan member and these duvet covers were representative of my clan tartan, I would fellate the Dress Act of 1746 in gratitude for banning the wearing of same. The wall pictures are a mix of weird Asian appropriation (interior decorating a overseas tour of duty?) and the sort of chintzy ‘Hollywood Backlot’ painted collection of vaguely recognizable profiles, which represent a cheap exercise in diffuse masturbatory nostalgia, passed off as art. And let’s not forget the ceramic figurines of leprechauns, because god knows they’ll haunt /my/ dreams. Bored cherub throw pillows. Cheetahs in various attitudes. Dolphins wearing sunglasses. A charming odalisque with a sort of Titian touch to the coloration. A generous coating of my vom (I have added frame).

The lighting consists of an obscure system of panels and switches designed to allow no one under the age of sixty to turn on a fucking light anywhere in the home. My job, as the person running this open house, is to turn on every light in the home. Lovely. And naturally no one’s come to my little shop of horrors.

I do like:
1) the forest green trim inlay on the kitchen cabinets, and
2) the sleek vintage Ford Maverick someone’s working on in the garage, not least because it offers a ready means of escape from the house where taste came to die.

Am I the cuntiest cunt-waffle ever to be dressed in maple syrup and butter? Yes. Are these the most threatening sofas since Terror of the Autons?

I’m certainly not sitting in them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070725/ap_on_fe_st/death_cat

Cat predicts death and is a perfect short story in the making. Cat: Your life is a prompt for a mediocre liberal arts student to capitalize on. I hope you never wondered in your tiny cat brain what is was all about. Because that's pretty much it.


BWAH I am hung over, can't get back to napping, walked a long ass way at 6:30 AM to pick up my car from the bar and now can't get back to sleep, and am really sore from walking all that way (to 900 Governor and back from my house) last night in those netted tights and satin pumps. And I only slept like four hours and have to go and deliver for the wedge at 11. Then rush to finish that ass-ton of homework, then go to class, then slink in late to my Writer's Workshop. Fuck.

...Imma need me some coffee.

P.S. Awesome headline spotting:

Potter's magic can't beat Chinese pirates