a place for everything and everything in its place
it's so fucking simple really. it makes so much sense. that along with making sure you put things away seems like all you need to have a tidy, organized and therefore (at least in a certain respect, at least to people like me) happy existence. but what when the simple system breaks down? what if there isn't a place for everything? what if every place is fucking filthy and/or easily susceptible to filth?
it's as if there is a forcefield surrounding my room. i can only go in there to get clothes. and even that process broke down recently when i realised that the back of my dresser is just open(!) so the filthy industrial dust that flakes from the walls and wooden beams can get in through the back. I'm not a prissy fuck or anything. really. i actually used to be quite filthy and fine with it. i seem to be developing some kind of ocd (like everybody else it seems). i am constantly afraid i have a urinary tract infection. so i shower a lot (compared to how often i used to shower) and change my underpants a lot. i also think i have a yeast infection developing a lot of the time. i was taking cranberry pills and acidophilus for a little while, preventatively, but i haven't kept it up because i am much more o than c.
i just got up to get some water, but i remembered that the filter needs to be changed. instead of changing it, i am just not drinking water. what the hell? the lightbulb also needs to get changed. and we need paper towels which i am of course not (gasp!) leaving the house to get even though the store is about a block and a half from here. we could use toilet paper too. but no. i am not mopping the floor in my room even though it's the only barrier now between having a set up bedroom and a storage room (which is what i've had for 2 years now) because i can't bring myself to move the boxes around. what the hell is wrong with me?
my brother says i am lazy, which i guess it what i think. but i like to romanticize it is something more. or maybe it is something more. or i hope it's something more because i can't understand how anyone could be quite this lazy.
i bought a deep fry kit yesterday. it's a cast iron pot with a net thing and a thermometer. the pot needs to be 'seasoned'. which i was going to do just before. you know why i didn't? no paper towels. (or clean cloth towels, because they are in my open backed dresser.) i also was going to make vegan ice cream, or begin the process anyway, which i also can't do because i had to wash the blender and now i don't have any paper towels to dry it off with so i don't electrocute myself when i use it. rock.
so when i got home, i promised myself i would do one of 3 things: season the pot/make ice cream; mop my bedroom floor; go out and flyer for a show. what did i actually do? i checked email (which there was quite a lot of, all notices and things, nothing personal of course. btw, fucking public transportation fare hike possible and man that makes me angry). chatted a bit. checked out the new abc no rio website and got excited at the prospect of going there and doing something even though i know i either never will or will be super uncomfortable and intimidated if i actually do go. then i read some. washed dishes. talked to my roommate. notice i did none of the three things i'd promised myself i'd do? grrrrr.
-al
7.17.2002
check this out
"This ambitious restaurant/nightclub salutes one of the newer ethnic groups to get stirred into the cultural menudo that is the United States -- natives of the 21 Spanish-speaking nations south of the border." - from Universal Studios Escape: the ultimate guide to the ultimate theme park adventure.
i don't know. that's like the funniest thing i've read in the past couple of days. i mean, super disturbing, but since i'm trying to be less angry (i don't know why i bother) i'm trying to just find it funny. i hadn't realised that latino was a new ethnic group. i wonder what they thought they meant when they wrote that. it was probably some way of saying, hey, latino has been in the last few years and we're capitlising on it. or maybe they meant, "i read somewhere that soon latino will be the largest minority group in the US and we're capitalising on it." Latino culture is the newest ethnic group to be deemed trendy is what they probably meant. i mean, they couldn't really think that latino is a "new" ethnic group in the US.
in other ethnic group related weirdness, the reader survey in the new issue of clamor magazine has 4 choices for ethnic group: white or caucasion, black or african-american, latino/a and other (with a blank to fill in.) now, obviously, there are an innumerable number of ethnic groups and you can't have it just be a box you check off. but i am kind of floored that 'asian' isn't one of their boxes. i wrote them a letter about this, but i haven't sent it yet because i'm uber-lazy.
-al
7.07.2002
fuckity fuck fuck
i've been going over the details of why i fucking hate my super over and over for the past few hours so it's hard to go through it all here. but everyone's sick of my shit and i have nowhere else to turn.
something got clogged and backed up and water started pouring into my neighbors apartment. in ours it just dripped some. but there was a waterfall next door. what's really infuriating, is the problem arose at 6:30, and the fucking super didn't come for an hour and it was another hour and a half before a plumber got here. he won't break into the apartment above, 'they wouldn't like that'. he won't do anything useful at all and i totally won't trust him when he tells me, 'it's ok now'. what if this happens again? they won't tell us when it's ok to use the water. they don't tell us anything OR think there is any reason for anyone (even the people who had water seriously pouring into their apartment for 2 hours) to be upset. the worst part of it all, is that I can't complain to anyone about the super. we didn't have heat for 2 months and he didn't care and wouldn't send someone to fix it (didn't seem to even believe us. 'it's not so bad in here') and when we tried not to pay the heat for those months, we wrote a letter with our rent to the landlord. the super intercepted the letter! and then came to our apartment and said we were 'just being mean'. what a fucker! if he wants to see mean, i can show him mean. me writing we shouldn't have to pay for heat that we didn't get and that the super didn't do anything for 2 months is not mean. it was the truth. and in the end, because our letters couldn't get to the landlord, we had to pay the heat! grrrrrr.
-al
7.03.2002
dear diary: i am so alone.
it is soooo fucking hot what the fuck. i'm so sick of this shit. you know, i think that if we have to put up with the cold, we shouldn't have to put up with the heat. i mean, i guess it hasn't been that cold. whatever. i'm hot. i'm irritable and everyone else is being difficult.
i'm trying to look up cell phone plans to help my friend pick one that will be good from him and less pricey than his current plan. but it's really difficult to look up information online. haven't these companies heard of charts? just a comparative services chart. that's all i need.
blech, it's too hot to post. no one's reading anyway, right? yeah.
-al
7.01.2002
we're here about the mattress trade. we're here for the kids
i just slept for 12 hours. which is actually not terribly odd for me but i feel like kerap. i purposely didn't drink last night so i wouldn't feel like crap today. well, actually, that wasn't the whole reason i didn't drink, but it reallysucks that I feel like crap anyway. i took me about 4 really sore unhappy wakings up to realise what the hell was wrong with me: i went dancing last night. actually, i got up at 11, went to play a show (it was an afternoon benefit), went home and unpacked and then went dancing. i had a really good time which is cool. i wish i went dancing more often. the only two times i've gone dancing in the past year (including last night) were with My Best Friend (tm) who i guess i'll just call A for now*. last time was right before new year's in new orleans. unfortunately, A doesn't live here and no one i know wants to go dancing or probably dance ever. now i am soo sore because i don't exercise. not rarely exercise, don't. so last night was like the most physical exercise i've had in a long time. I'm proud though that i danced so much and felt pretty comfortable dancing even though i had nothing to drink. i don't usually drink in order to overcome my shyness/self-consiousness, but it's a side effect i don't usually mind. but last night i was relatively outgoing and totally sober, which is pretty cool. anyhoo, so i slept until just now, which is about 3, and I feel wrecked. but, of course, i also had a totally weird dream at the end of my marathon sleep and whenever that happens i wonder, was i supposed to sleep that long so i could experience that dream? does it have some meaning?
(the scene becomes blurry as we enter the dream sequence):
i'm with someone i am interpreting as my uncle, but he's not any of my actual uncles (i don't think). we talk about how he's either trading me or something else for some babies, so he can sell them or something, i think. then we get to 'the place', a mattress store. we climb on top of the awning, so we can get the owner, who lives upstairs, to let us in. he doesn't understand why we're there because we're talking in euphemisms, trying not to say, 'we're here to buy kids'. once i come out and say, 'the kids, we're here for the kids', he's all, oohhh, and he brings out two wheelchair bound adults. they are crippled (and i apologize if that's an offensive term. i'm totally a pc pirate and all, but sometimes i don't know which terms people actually find offensive) physically, but mentally 'normal'. it turns out there is no trading going on. i ask to use the bathroom. for some reason in the dream i keep wanting to cry. i can't find the bathroom (which is a recurrent theme in my dreams) and i end up behind a display crying. the place i'm in is a supermarket/home for disabled peolple of all kinds (i don't know what the two have to do with eachother). the man that owns it is george bush sr's long lost benevolent son, and his son is the one who let us in the window (though by now my uncle's character is gone). we are supposed to help work at this place, i think.
i may have woken up at this point, i don't remember what happens but then:
there's a girl chasing my male friend and I around the store. she seems to want to go out with my friend, and she seems to think he is mentally disabled. she's being very mean to him and he's not blowing up at her. finally i yell at her and it comes out that she's 'only 14' and for some reason that makes me feel ok about her being mean. like she's just immature or something. i leave them alone and pick up a bunch of cats, who I put in what seems to be my car. i'm trying to take them somewhere. somehow at some point, i am now in the car with my parents and my youngest brother (who is older than i am). we're driving around and we have these cats. and i have these dirty pots (undoubtedly because ihave 3 day old dirty pots to clean in real life) and i'm asking my brother to leave them alone. no one listens to me and finally i scream at them and my parents listen but my brother doesn't. (i guess this also makes sense to me.)
shortly after that i woke up. feeling shitty, as i mentioned. was i supposed to have this dream? i don't know. but i had it.
