|
|
< 1/21 1/22 1/23 1/24 1/25 1/26 1/27 1/28 1/29 1/30 1/31 >
|
Wednesday, 31 January 2001 (killing for company) 7:31am I was quite hungry by the time I reached Anodynye's salon, and since I was 15 minutes early, I strongly considered stopping at the Chinese fast-food place a couple doors down. (Well, okay, technically it's in the foor court.) On a whim, I peeked in the salon, and she just happened to be standing by the counter. So I could eat now and get that out of the way—and orange-flavored chicken was sounding awfully damn good—or I could go right in, getting both an early start and avoiding having to tell the clerk my name. My priorities being what they are, I went right in and up to Anodyne. Later on as the color was setting in she went and got us food from the Chinese place anyway, so it worked out.
I kept the red. I'm still not sure if I should have.
|
||
 | ||
Tuesday, 30 January 2001 (the first flower after the flood) 9:34am Day...what? Nine, I guess. Something like that. I almost shaved this morning, but my neck is just a little too bumpy, and there's still a little redness on my upper lip. My face could use a couple more days before I start hacking away at it. I might just wait until Saturday morning, although with my luck I'd probably cut myself. I'll probably do that anyway.
The most compelling reason to shave this morning was to make things go a little
smoother at Anodyne's salon tonight. "Sharon? Sherry? Are you sure it isn't
Steve?" I have a hunch it wouldn't have made any difference.
|
||
| ||
Monday, 29 January 2001 (home of the brave) 7:32am i want you to justify what i'm feeling. 9:46am I left early on Friday, and subsequently missed a departmental meeting wherein The Den Mother apparently chewed out the collective ass for not keeping proper hours. She then sent out an email addendum defining those hours as 9:00am to 6:00pm. Whether or not the fact that I'm always here by 8:30am (since that's when Maddy has to be at work) allows me the slack to leave at 5:30pm, I don't know, and I'm not asking.
Had I known about the meeting I might have stuck around,
but of course it was only announced a few hours before it
actually happened, further proving my "office as elementary
school" theory of TDM's management style. Pop quiz, everyone!
Sure hope you studied!
|
||
| ||
Sunday, 28 January 2001 (39) 9:23pm Turns out I've passed Dylan's place any of a number of times on the bus while heading to a zapping appointment. We took the bus yesterday, since it was faster and less stressful (for me, anyway) than driving. Before going into Dylan's we stopped at the convenience store across the street; we were observed by one of her (remarkably observant) neighbors, since they said to her, "Did you see those goth girls who went into the store?" Dylan told him they were friends of hers, and to be on his best behavior. Which he was, although it was a little creepy. Almost has creepy as he must have found it to get a closer look at me. I'm proud to say we didn't turn the teevee on for most of the day, mostly because Costanza was over making my computer play nice with itself. The crux is that we missed the Superbowl entirely, and thankfully the upstairs neighbors did not have another ragin' kegger as I was afraid they might. We didn't even watch "just for the commercials;" I imagine if there's any I really simply must see, that's what Adcritic is for. At least the team with the cool name won. "Ravens." Better than "Giants" or "Packers" or "Raiders" or, dawg help us, "49ers." Ewwww.
|
||
| ||
Saturday, 27 January 2001 (no man's land) 9:32am Jawbreaker blew, but in that gloriously special way which makes me wish all the more that Mystery Science Theater 3000 was still being made, and doing teen comedies. Day Six, and my face isn't quite healed up. My neck looks like I was recently attacked my mosquitoes, and my upper lip still has its fair share of scabs and dead skin. None of which is unusual, except that it doesn't usually last this long. And I'm already getting regrowth, but I don't dare shave. Which especially sucks because we're going to a party at Dylan's place in Alameda today, and I don't expect it'll be as mercifully dark as The Mint was on Wednesday night. It's all people who know me well—coincidentally, I ran into Dylan right before I got zapped last Sunday and she was at The Mint, so she's getting to see the process from start to finish (oooh, what a thrill for her)—so I have no reason to be embarrassed, but still, as I say, it sucks.
|
||
| ||
Friday, 26 January 2001 (you should have seen the ratings that day) 9:14am Among the frequent complaints by the numerous self-anointed critics of online diaries is how negative they tend to be, nothing but a bunch of whiners doing what they do best. (Hrm, am I talking about the diarists or the critics?) To that end, I now present A Happy Feature: One of the Things I Like About Myself.
When I fall down, I get back up. It doesn't matter how much it hurts, it
doesn't matter if the voice has become a choir—when my vision clears,
there are things that need to be done and I get on about doing them. Sidereal motion continues no matter what,
and therefore I must, too.
Then I went home and found a bill from the lab which did my bloodwork over the last few months. The cracks apparently don't run that deep, since my insurance didn't cover the tests. It wasn't so far-fetched of me to think they would, since my original bloodwork in '98 (and the infamous "why are you so jumpy?" followup of '99) was covered, even though the name on the paperwork was Sherilyn and the name on the card was Jeff, the same as it is now.
$285, and only for the test in November, the one they screwed up. I imagine the bill
for December will come later, and cost more. Oh well. Rock the boat, the waves come
up, you get wet. I'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to work.
It's a job for which he is extremely well-suited, his film geekery far surpassing mine. Indeed, it's at a level I can only aspire to, and for as much as I'd hate to return to video retail, if I could have his job I'd probably do so in a flash. When CNET does go belly-up, in all likelihood I'll come knocking on his door for a job (since when that happens the whole damn internet industry will be crumbling and moderately-skilled webmonkeys such as myself will be even more useless than we already are), and I'm sure he'd make one up for me. Sometimes it's all I can do not to just pull an American Beauty/Office Space and just quit anyway on principle. For the time being, he graciously offered to "update" my membership, slapping twenty free rentals onto the card. The manager can do that sort of thing. It's all about who you know, y'see. It also occurs to me that he'd probably be more than happy to order stuff for me for cost, and there's that Cosmos DVD box set I've been drooling over...no, no, no, must behave, must behave...
|
||
| ||
Thursday, 25 January 2001 (pale and precious) 9:56am We returned from Jayne's birthday party at The Mint (karaoke!) after midnight to find that the neighbors had closed the front gate, which is good. Unfortunately, they'd left the garage door—the one which leads to our apartment—open. We hadn't left at 7am, so we have no idea how long it was like that, but I'd guess for most of the evening. So, in the spirit of communication, I wrote the nieghbors and cc'd the landlord: We returned home at half past midnight last night and found the garage door open. *Please* be sure to keep it and the front gate closed at all times. Thank you.
Gentle yet firm. Maddy commented that I'm clearly fed up; I didn't think it was particularly harsh, but apparently
it is by my standards. Just goes to show a pussy I normally am.
I've emailed him, but I don't know if he's checking his mail with any kind of frequency these days. Probably not. I still find it curious that people ask me about him. I guess I came along at just the right moment, getting to know him just long enough to like him and not long enough to develop a grudge like most everyone else has.
|
||
| ||
Wednesday, 24 January 2001 (different insects) 11:28am Considering that he's one of the people who inspired my pseudo-confessional writing, it's comforting to know that Pete Townshend has an online diary. Makes me feel like I'm not a total fool—or if I am, at least I'm in good company. Kudos to Dana for having pointed it out to me in the first place. 1:14pm The unwieldy but vast bounty of the Usenet (not to be confused with the media-and-user-friendly but IT-irritating Napster) has provided me with a bootleg of the Nine Inch Nails show I went to last June. The quality's about as good as you can expect from an audience recording of an arena show, but I've certainly heard worse, and it's nice to have. I need to get in touch with Ilene and see if she wants a copy. I also came across a curious artifact from my past, a rancid chunk of eighties sub-Madonna pop called "Baby Love" by a never-was called Regina. It has a special significance for me; I'd started listening to Top 40 radio in '84 when I was 11, as an attempt to catch up culturally with my classmates. (I almost said "with my friends," but that would have been a gross exaggeration.) I remember how abuzz everyone was when Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video premiered, but I didn't have the first clue what they were talking about. Just that they'd all seen something the night before which apparently scared the bejeezus out them. To me, cable was this weird form of teevee which I'd only encountered in motels and my uncle's house during our annual drive to Washington. Hell, my father's apartment didn't even have it yet. In all likelihood I'd never even heard of MTV; I was lucky enough to get daily doses of M*A*S*H, and Star Trek on the weekends. (It killed me that the rest of the civilized world got Star Trek every night of the week, while Fresno's retarded Channel 26 ghettoized it at 9am on Saturday mornings. Fuckers.) It wasn't that I was sheltered per se; my mom couldn't afford cable, and I was never especially inclined to listen to Top 40 because I didn't realize that I was supposed to. My brother jonco and I were already rabid Beatles fans thanks to our older brothers, and both of my parents (in different homes, natch) listened to country music, so I did too. I still like country, though I couldn't tell Faith Hill from The Dixie Chicks if my life depended on it. The major paradigm shift occured when my mom started dating a guy who was a bit more culturally aware than the both of us combined; and, more importantly, he had a beautiful daughter upon whom I'd developed a crush. (I'd actually met her, or at least seen her, the previous summer at camp. I'm pretty sure I still have the camp picture with her in it somewhere. And yes, we were both pre-teens and seems awfully weird now, but it felt real.) So, to bring us up to speed, my mom purchased Thriller. Hey, it made sense at the time. My favorite arcade (Festival Game Palace on Blackstone between Sierra and Bullard, defunct since the early nineties) had a video jukebox during that period, and though I don't recall how it happened, at one point the four of us wound up there watching the Rick Springfield "Bop 'Til You Drop" video. I was almost shocked by how much my mother was getting into it, and expressed my surprise—only to be met with a rather harsh "watch out or you'll blow it for both us"-type shushing. In retrospect, I don't blame her at all. Her designs on him were certainly much more concrete than mine were on his daughter; I didn't entirely understand my attraction to her, and there were surely many boys out there who knew exactly what they wanted from her. I just wanted to be with her, somehow. It was a confusion of intention which wouldn't find any clarity until years later with The Ex, and even then it took some sorting out. Anyway, before too long they disappeared off the radar entirely, but we kept abreast of popular culture from that point onwards. And, really, late '84 through mid-'85 was not a bad time to be listening to the radio. So one day in '86 I went to a sneak preview of Aliens with my father. (I got a poster there which adorned most of my bedroom walls for the next eight years. I don't have it anymore. I don't wanna talk about it anymore.) It was hosted by a local Top 40 station, probably the one I listened to. Of course they had their "personalities" there, and had speakers set up playing their station. I remember walking down the aisle as Regina's "Baby Love" played and having a minor if two-tiered epiphany:
Something had to give. As it happens I'd been listening to a lot of Tom's old tapes and records (many of which I'd stumbled into ownership of) and liked them a lot—especially something called Live Rust, by Neil Young—and I'd always liked The Beatles and Dylan, so I decided to give the local "classic rock" station a try.
The first thing I head was "Baba O'Riley" by The Who. I didn't hear "Baby Love" again for fifteen years.
Anodyne's going to be doing my hair next Tuesday at 6:30pm, in her swanky salon. I made the appointment over the phone with the receptionist (and I'm not looking forward to getting her to pronounce my name correctly when I come in), so I suppose I should give Anodyne fair warning if I see her tonight. I may be losing out the red; I haven't decided yet. It just never quite had the effect I'd been hoping for. Mind you, I don't know exactly what that effect was supposed to be, but...
Sure I do. Making me different from what I am. And it just don't work that way.
|
||
| ||
Tuesday, 23 January 2001 (don't look) 6:32am Day Two: as usual, the bumpiness has gone down and the redness has taken more of an orange tint. Each individual spot has decreased in size, which actually results in the discoloration being more noticeable overall. Again I wonder how anyone can seriously consider going fulltime before completing electro; of course, most of them probably don't get as much done at a time as I do, which then must surely prolong the process. When I'd mentioned to The Ex a few months back that I still wasn't through with electro, she replied, "Does it ever end?" Aside from summing up my own feelings on the matter, I wonder if that was a reference to Maggie, who as recently as '96 was both fulltime *and* getting zapped on a regular basis, but whose ego would probably not allow to walk around with a face looking like mine. Probably just has a little tiny bit done every session, accepting how much longer it takes to get done as a worthy tradeoff for being able to live fulltime. Which I guess is as good a way to do it as any, especially if you believe you already pass... 9:01am The Den Mother is out of the office, which is always a good thing. Pike is also out of the office, which is never a good thing. Well, it's always a good thing for him, but not so much of a good thing for me. It's not coincidental that they're out of the office at the same time, since they're on a business trip together. This is a very bad thing, and my heart goes out to him. 10:45am I think he used an entirely different setting on Sunday. I didn't ask, because if the answer was yes I didn't want him to interpret it as a complaint (I only complain to him when it's absolutely necessary, especially these days when he's so openly bitter about being pressured into redesigning the office). But it was louder. For the first time, at least when the needle was in the vicinity of my ear, I heard it. I tend to call electrolysis "zapping" out of habit and because everybody else does, but it gives a false impression that the electricity is palpable; it normally isn't, at least not to me. I realize intellectually that an electrical current is involved, but in terms of the actual experience it's mostly just heated pinching and pulling, which can be bad enough. This time, though, I could hear buzzing, crackling sound as the follicles were assaulted. It was a peculiar experience.
Speaking of follicles, he said that a majority of them have (finally) just closed up altogether.
Time will tell.
As is probably the case in all major cities, many of the businesses on Market Street have large sliding metal doors which they put down at night to prevent burglary. It's a bit more prevalent on the seedier blocks, such as the neighborhood around The Market Street Cinema, easily the biggest strip club/porno theater in town this side of the O'Farrell. Anyway, someone much smarter than myself realized the Cinema's metal door would be a perfect place for a Verizon Wireless ad, especially during the morning rush, since the theater doesn't on most days until 11:30am. Sheer brilliance.
Something I've wondered, after many years of travelling the length of Market: what the hell is Fascination,
and how exactly do you play it?
|
||
| ||
Monday, 22 January 2001 (outlive the dinosaur) 8:43am The good news was he'd finally gotten a new stereo, with decent speakers and a five-disc changer. I've never had a need for one at home, but while getting zapped it comes in handy. The bad news was he was out of EMLA, the high-octane local anesthetic which makes the process a little more tolerable, especially on the upper lip and the bottom chin. Alas. I'd taken a couple swallows of Walgreen's Red Death (aka "cherry flavor," since there had been no traditional Green Death avalable) and two vicodin before he started, but it wasn't quite enough, considering that we went for about two half hours straight before we took a break. By his standards he was remarkably focused, which is a good thing, but can be a little unnerving, sorta like how a driver who is paying a little too much attention to the center of the road my fail to notice something dangerous off to the side. But I survived, mainly focusing on the music (Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II, Siouxsie's Peepshow, R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People and Wilco's Being There) and my own breathing. What was happening to my flesh was not important, and the more I could disassociate myself from it, the better. Occasionally he'd bring me back up to the surface (did you know that Nostradamus predicted Bush's victory? I did absolutely nothing to argue the point, having long since learned my lesson), but eventually it was over. So my face in in full second-day gore mode. In a week it'll probably be healed nicely, as it always is. He was telling me yesterday that when all is said and done I was going to have beautiful skin, since it's neither particularly oily nor dry. I pointed out the zits from last week, and he said it was probably just stress. Okay, I'll give him that one, but I'd bet he compliments all his customers regardless of their actual complexion. It's the kind of thing a lot of us need to be told.
|
||
| ||
Sunday, 21 January 2001 (the sea refuses no river) 8:24am I know, I know, I'm not supposed to care about these things, but it kills me that Marilyn Manson and Rose McGown have split up. They were just so damn pretty together, just like Johnny Depp and Sherilyn Fenn once were (and, thankfully, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins still are). It's sad, really. Anyway, I'm getting zapped this morning. I never like doing so on the weekend, particuarly early in the day, but it needed to be done. I'll just have to medicate myself accordingly.
|
||
| ||