Scientology calls to me

One the 2 block walk from the BART to my work, I pass at least 2, sometimes 3 or 4, people handing out scientology flyers. I can now apparently get my personality tested at the scientology center if I want . . . 7 times. Yes, that's right, I have 7 of these things. I'm as much a fan of absurdity as the next person, actually more because usually the next person won't take a flyer, but it's got to end. I'm not going to go to the scientology center because I don't want to get sucked into a cult. I don't know if I'm that susceptible, and I don't want to find out.

I can't keep taking these flyers or they'll take over my life. Yet I can't pass the scientology girls up. What to do? Dilemma, thy name is scientology. (Dodgeball is funny).

On a side note, I'm now keeping a list of names that are interesting. It's a job perk. My favorites thus far are Venus Van Hook and Amber Lemon. Amber Lemon is my most favorite though. Her name means Yellow Lemon, or even Yellow Yellow. It reminds me of when the guy that I will always think of as Dash from Sabrina the Teenage Witch although he's been more famous for other roles before and since said on Scrubs, "You thought my name was Turk Turkleton???"

On being one step away from telemarketing

As I look around, I'm happy to see that I'm once more surrounded by gentle readers (you are being gentle aren't you, because I can tell you it's a bitch to find someone to shampoo the carpets in cyberspace) who, even if they aren't amused, understand when I'm joking. If I were to say to you, "I wouldn't mind gas prices so much if it didn't take so long for the pump to siphon out 9 gallons of my blood," you might roll your eyes. However, you most definitely won't say to me sternly, "You had better be off to the hospital. It's hardly safe to lose 9 gallons of blood, young lady." Sometimes people don't get my jokes, so I'm glad to say all of you do.

Work goes quite well though. People laugh at my jokes, and don't look at me all funny-like and say, "You're so funny." (Which a few people did while I was at Woodberry. One the other hand, I did suggest they get a toy train track to deal with the problems they were having with motion lights).

I was at a law firm for about 4 days, which was surprisingly quite fun. I got to hear Sarah Weddington (one of the women who argued Roe v. Wade, successfully) speak. She had me sold on law school for the whole of her speech, but I thought better of it about 5 seconds after I left the room. I also met someone who reads and watches Sci-Fi, and we're gonna go see Harry Potter when it comes out, in IMAX. This is good, as I don't think I've ever seen HP alone, and that would be kind of sad.

Now I'm at Ameriprise, which has cool people to work with. My official job title is "One Step Above Telemarketer." Okay, maybe two steps. I actually call to offer people a job in the company. It's a good job too. They train you, and in your first year you can make between $45,000 and $55,000. Still, I think it's the quotas and emphasis on making numbers even if they aren't quality numbers that weirds me out and makes me think of telemarketing.

I'm kind of enjoying my job as a temp. As Melinda, who's going to see HP with me said, "You know this is going in a book." Like the time that I overheard the first year lawyers having a very serious discussion on cereal. One was eating Rice Krispies, which the other hadn't had in years. And you know what they really liked that was at the cafeteria in their home office? Smart Start. But Basic Four is good, too. Haven't you heard of it? It's got all sorts of little bits in it.

Or the three male lawyers, who by nature of being lawyers have to be a couple years older than me, who were discussing a scene from Mean Girls.

Or the woman whose resume was titled, "Administrative Assitant" who had excellent 35 wpm typing skills.

Or the time that one of the London solicitors (I say this because they were solicitors as opposed to barristers. Yes, I asked. I am that dorky and keen to put my knowledge of British law to use.) wrote "London, England" for his home office, and I told him, "Thank God you wrote that, or else we never would have known which London to send this to."

So who's with me on the Nano Wrimo stuff? I'm hoping Tiff reads this and says yes. She and I have had some serious conversations about giving up this crazy, overambitious dream we have of being copywriters and instead writing trashy romance novels and becoming million--nay, zillion--aires. Any other takers? Don't say you aren't prepared. I have 7 days (one of which being the closest you can get to a religious holiday in San Francisco, yep, Halloween) to research the geography of Hell. Among other things. Where are blind poets obsessed with trilogies when you need them? Failing Milton, Dante might be helpful. Chrissy, what do you know about the inferno???

Okay, last post today. But it had to be done. I'm at the library. Some guy just got a phone call, strictly taboo but there it is, and his phone starts playing a song with the lyrics, "Won't you have some dirty hot sex with me."

There are kids here. Loads of the titchy little buggers.

Fifty points to anyone who tells me what song those lyrics are from. Another two hundred if you change your ringtone to that and let me call you all the time to embarrass you. You might want to keep in mind that these points are meaningless before you make any rash decisions.

Tally ho, time to move on, what, what!!

Curses, blazes, and damnation. That was the longest post ever. What a waste. I keep trying to blog about last Tuesday when I went for the free day to SFMOMA and contemplated modern art, but it seems that your joy and excitement is to be delayed again.

However, in the mean times, and what times are meaner than when it's 7:30 and I haven't had dinner, I can tell you that I have had a busy week. I've made it to the Short Shorts Litquake event, which was amazing. A bunch of short story authors got an assignment to write a story with the prompt, "The first time I . . . " Some great stuff. I bought a book there. I shouldn't have, but I did.

I also went to the Ask a Scientist event. Drove to it, in fact, which I'm kind of proud of. That was yesterday, and I had a long day yesterday. I contemplated curling up with one of the many books sitting around whining plaintively, "Read me." But did I do that? No, instead, I found my way into the city and listened to Maureen O'Sullivan talk about how to tell if people are lying. Apparently, the best lie detectors are over 30, so I've got another 8 years before I worry about the fact that I think all people are trying for heaven and don't tell whoppers.

Glad I went, too, because I ran into the nice lady from the Chris Moore board who tells me that Chris is calling into Borderlands Books on Sunday to have a little discussion about Blood-Sucking Fiends and the imminent sequel. Best of all, by Sunday, I'll know where that is because I'm volunteering there on Saturday for the Litquake Litcrawl. If I don't get blotto at the volunteer party after the Litcrawl on Saturday (kidding, kidding), I should be able to find my way back just fine.

Anyway, more later. I'm going to go pick out some DVDs at the library and head home.

These games we play

Everyone will, I hope, pardon me while I make a long and direct address. If nothing else, pardon me on the grounds that I intend this to be an end to the whole business.

Clark, you say that you liked me better for my disdain of you, but I think you assume that I never liked you. At one point, I had been wont to like, admire, revere, and envy you in pretty much equal measures. You always had more talent and more friends than I did. You were funnier and more fun to be around. I say this simply to make sure you avoid the mistake of thinking that Dalsing girl never liked you anyway. I did. Your actions, your choices, changed that. Which sounds pleasantly like the monologuing of a evil villian so feel free to quote me whenever you write the Fantastic Four or any other comic, as I'm sure you will (be paid to write comics, that is, not quote me).

That said, I think you read too deeply into my entry. My first thought on finding your entry was, "What the fuck." That was followed swiftly by the thought that I ought to look up Matt Griffith and tell him that our subterranean society of smart people, first concieved of in high school, was back on, because now I had connections in the subterranean world. Maybe I was unnecessarily harsh, but it's only because I feel that I can be quite pithy when I'm nasty (probably untrue, but friends always laugh). I definitely feel like I did Caleb an injustice.

Because let's face it, my WTF moment really came from the fact that I never did anything to you other than stop liking you. Caleb has every right to hate me. I don't think I did anything wrong there, but I certainly didn't do everything right.

But to return to the point, my entry was just one in a series of stories I tell about the people I've met and the places I've gone. A light-hearted story, a joke.

It was also my way of trying to turn the tables in the games you played with words. Thinking of the way you speak and write always reminded me of the kid who stayed close to the safe spot while playing freeze tag. While I was out fighting the good fight, unfreezing my friends, teasing, taunting, flirting with disaster, there was always that one kid who never had the guts step away from the safe spot and really play the game. Was I going to end up frozen the way I played? Hell, yeah, but I was going to need the breather by that time and I was going to know that five people were out there in the world waiting to unfreeze me. It was a strategy to win or lose everything. You play the game to not lose. Every relationship, every discussion, every everything, you don't want to gain anything. You just don't want lose.

Of course, now I see that I mucked up my turn something awful. Now you think I want to come out and play. I don't. You tell me in your comment to ignore and reinterpret your words. But, you see, I already had, hadn't I? I already knew. God forbid you say something you mean, something you'll stand behind, so I pretwisted and preturned and preprodded your remarks into a shape I liked. Because, no, Clark, you never called me a power hungry bitch, that would have meant you had to stand by your words, explain them rather than explain them away. You also didn't come talk to me, at a time when we were good friends, and bring up a problem you had with me. No, instead, you yelled at me that running writer's club wasn't a position of authority, blah, blah, whatever. I've let it go, and only ever refer to as the "power-hungry bitch episode," as a joke, the way I did in my post.

That comment, by the way, masterful. You put frilly complimentary borders on every barb and edge every compliment with razor blades. The problem is that, in the end, it doesn't end up meaning two opposite things at once; it ends up meaning nothing.

Sorry if I upset you, or if you imagined me in the Golden State, sobbing away, but it was a joke. I already know not to take your words at face value, because nothing you say or do can be taken at face value.

In the end reckoning, I laughed at myself. I looked up some old friends in the process, and I thought of looking up some others. I may yet do it if I can find them. That's what I'll take away from this. And yes, you're right, I'm doing "relatively well." Relative to what, we'd never agree on, so we'll leave it there. But I'm happy and right where I want to be.

Caleb, if he cares to, can take away the fact that, I agree that he has a right to dislike me. And if he cares to hear it, I think he'll do great things as well, because he wasn't one of the safe spot kids. When he says things, they're real, and I respect that.

Chrissy is not a major winner here, but she does get to relive her clever haikus and to be told that "Peter Pan Games" suddenly strikes me as a very clever title.

You can take away whatever you wish. But I'm going to change this game once and for all. Fuck the safe spots; fuck clever and vague phrases; fuck not standing by what you say and not saying anything you feel is worth standing by. Tag, you're it, buddy. And while you're it, I dare you to say something real for once. But say it to someone else. My mom says it's time to come in for the night, and I won't be coming out to play tomorrow. I've got better things to do, like pick out the song to play when I count down seeing the ocean on the Great Highway (so far, I've had the best luck with "When I Come Around") or picking out the clothes I'm going to wear tomorrow.

I think for a million reasons (most of which, only God and I can fathom) that ending with this quote is poetic symmetry:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream

Oh, my gosh!

Lemony Snicket is reading at Booksmith on Haight St. on November 7 at 7pm. Who's gonna be there? I'm gonna be there.

It's official . . .

I'll get to the meaning of my title in a second, but first a word from our sponsors:

From the coalition of fabulous fun festiveness:
I saw Daniel Handler. That's right, Lemony Snicket, walked by me in the foyer of the Herbst Theater like he was a real person. I felt like a total doofus for staring (and diving for my phone to text Chrissy, because I had to tell someone) until the girl next to me said, "Do you know him or are you just as amazed as I am that a god just walked by you?"

From the society of people who talk to other people:
I went to volunteer today at a Litquake event, which was fun. I took the author's to their super-secret entrance which didn't make me as tongue-tied as you would think after reading the above, because I hadn't really heard of any of them. Whoops . . . probably shouldn't admit that, but it's an event to let people hear their favorite authors and find new ones after all, I just did less of the former and more of the latter.

So I actually talked to another person about my age (who was volunteering with me) for about two hours. Luckily, she pointed out that the event that I'm volunteering at on Saturday (the LitCrawl, get it, like pub crawl, on Valencia) is not as far from a BART station as I thought and will be a big enough event that they're closing off the entire length of Valencia. So I won't be driving in as I originally thought I might, but all will be well anyway because I'm close to BART and there are lots of people.

And now for our feature presentation:
Ahem, as everyone can probably tell, my computer is fixed now. It was, please excuse the very technical language that I will now use, totally fucked. Why? I don't know. It's possible the considerable amount of time that I spent on the blog of one Mr. Lenar Clark gummed up the works.

Why was I on Clark's blog? Well, when someone dedicates some time to you on their blog, you feel like you really ought to put some time in to deserve it. What could someone who hasn't even spoken to me in two years have to say about me on his blog? Fancy you asking that, you rogue, because it relates back to my title.

It's official . . . I'm underground. That's what Clark had to say. I believe his words were something nearer to the effect of my resembling a mad monarch of a subterranean society of mole-people (if you can't take my word for it and must see, click here, though I warn you it's a looong entry). Still, I know that I understand his true meaning.

Yes, my friends, I'm happy to relate that someone has finally acknowledged my almost prescient liking for "Somebody Told Me" nearly a year and a half ago when my sister played it for me. Someone has seen my early adoption of cult classics like the Princess Bride for what it really is (when I say early adoption, here, I mean I was young when I fell in love Cary Elwes). Someone has finally alerted the world to my coolness in reading depressing Russian novels like The Brother's Karamozov for fun. And, yes, someone has finally given the green light to my sophomoric love of emo bands. And that person was Lenar Clark, who has now professed me Queen of the Underworld (should I start dressing like Kate Beckinsale did?).

Or maybe he just dislikes me as much as I disliked him. He did once basically call me a power hungry bitch. Hmm . . . nah.

I understand that I also have one Mr. Caleb Prewitt to thank for this distinction, but one can only sacrifice so much to the altar of vanity, and I don't have the sort of time it would seem like it would take to read that. So my computer needs have no fear from that quarter.