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You read about all these terrorists, most of them came here legally,
but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10-15
years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you are two days late with a
video and these people are all over you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge
of immigration." Jay Leno
Thursday, November 1, 2001
Dear HR: When I've just finished complaining about the onset of winter light blues, been recently inspired by Bess in her description of the beautiful California life, and always up for a change of scenery, do not email me about job openings in our Oakland office.
Thanks.
Additionally, while I enjoyed typing up reference lists while a tender undergrad, as they were essential to papers but not as bad to write as the actual subtantive paper, I'm not really too into it today. Especially when most of the author's reply to my request for references: "Oh, can you look in this report" which requires I type them all out. All of them!
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
I get the whole day-light savings deal. But I don't get why people don't talk about it a week before, play it up real big, prepare us for the ramifications of changing the hours of daylight over night. It is a big deal. It's like travelling to a new place in as much as the change is concerned but everything else is exactly the same. There is none of the natural gradual procession of daylight hours we normally get. Twice a year we mess it all up, suddenly.
I think I get that winter-depression disease. Actually, everyone does. And changing the clocks so that it is now dark after work, giving me no chance to walk home via the Brooklyn Bridge until spring, no sunsets when the train goes above ground, in one day rather than the gradual fading is too dramatic for me. It makes me want to split my wrists, just demonstrate how I am dramatically discomforted.
Because we work normal hours, because the world operates 9 to 5, we change the time. To best fit and maximize the number of day light hours. To have the sun rising as close as possible to the time people get up. To fit into modernity. To drive me up the wall as I have no trouble waking but find myself very heavy-lidded before I hear the 10 o'clock news come on in the other.
Daylight Savings Time is a bastard.
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
I had a disturbingly bad dream this past weekend about getting mugged, loosing everything I owned, no one believing me because I couldn't remember and they said if you couldn't remember it must be a dream, getting all jumpy when I finally woke up and generally getting bad sleep. My mother also had a bad dream which I think was much better. She hates snakes the way I hate roaches. She had a dream about these snakes turning inside out into kittens. My father had a called Copperhead on his bed-side table. I don't know if it is related.
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
My grandmother, Nanny, was brought to the hospital Sunday night. She passed out in Georgia. She has a potassium problem apparently. This woman, my only surviving grandparent, who has lived with me since I was 8, who worked until I was a senior in High School, who lived in Boston and New York City as a young lady during WWII, is sick. I mean, she's not deathly ill, she’s already out of the hospital.
But the thing is, she simply is not supposed to get sick, ever. She’s supposed to remain timeless. She has always been healthy and strong, only getting a cold every few years. She walks every day, to the library about ˝ mile away or into town-center, which is two miles. She has a sweet tooth so she’ll buy a bag of cookies or something in town to refuel herself for the walk back uphill. After being retired for 6 years, she just now sleeps past 10 am. She used to still get up at 6 am and have coffee with my mom. She doesn’t live with us because she was in need of family “elder care” she owns 1/3 of my family house and is generally a fixture in my life.
I love asking her for crochet help, sewing hints, temperatures for baking potatoes, how to look after plants and flowers. She’s a lady, my mom recalls when she used to wear white gloves to work every day. She also worked from the time she was 16 (because she skipped grades and graduated high school two years early) until she was 70. She raised 3 kids with only the help of her parents. Her favorite birds are cardinals and she makes us all creep into the kitchen if one is sitting in the lilac tree.
She forgets things these days but if you compare the amount of things I forget at 24 to the amount of things she forgets at over than 3 times my age, it’s pretty equal. But she can still tell you about summers on Long Island, the number of the apartment she lived in at Styvesant Village, the name of every employer she’s had. Who cares if she can’t recall if we fed the dogs or not. She knows if she’s eaten dinner though, because then it’s time for another treat. She puts shoes you leave around the house in places you can’t imagine looking for them. But I think she does this one just to entertain herself as we search frantically for a loafer.She goes to Georgia, where my uncle lives, often. For her other grandchildrens’ birthdays and usually Thanksgiving. But after the fire, she didn’t go for nearly 2 years until June when my uncle came up to work on our house. He was a surprise for her, as was her trip. She’s still there. I’ve been missing her for a while now. Even if we didn’t get along when I was a teenager who did not sit politely in skirts, said what I pleased and didn’t act as she expected, we’ve managed to create a relationship since. I like taking her shopping with me, to have someone to keep me company at check-out lines. I can’t wait until she comes home.
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
I went to New Jersey this weekend. I have to wait until 3 to 4 reasons accumulate to go, elsewise I’d go there all the time. I always have 1 reason: see Marie. But I needed to get the Halloween decorations I'd been accumulating, have my dad cut some chain and get my winter coats. Because the cold came Friday. And I found treasures in my coats:
Old corduroy coat I bought after the blizzard of 1995 and (almost killed myself walking over the M Street bridge to/from Georgetown on 3 foot high snow banks covered in ice alongside the 3 foot 6 railing- leaving a remaining 6 inches- with a 100 foot drop to a freeway on one side and a 3 foot drop onto M street on the other): 1 sparkly yellow lighter and random receipt for $3.46
Reversible down coat in light blue/navy bought because Jesse said it was very "J-lo": 2 wrinkly, smashed singles
Sensible black wool coat with one button missing on flap covered pockets: Barnard alumni i.d. card
Once I found $50 in a coat a year later. That was probably the best surprise. I remembered even getting it at the bank months previous and then thinking I’d lost it. Winter coat pockets are like little time capsules and savings banks from 7 months previous.
I went a-crafting at Diego's as he was building and all too complicated art project wherein I insisted he draw up plans, Marie was making collages and getting mad when the paper bubbled and I was crocheting a hat which I no longer like and rather hate. In tearing out crochet stitches, I also managed to knock over the glass of wine smelly-boy had recently poured for me, sending splatters all over me, Marie's poster board and the floor. The dog was licking some up and I kept quiet and let her do so.
The next morning, I had to wash my clothes. I decided not to bring everything I own with me for a change and to wear the same pants 2 days in a row. And then I had wine all over them. There were two bottles in the laundry room of stain-treater. I shook them both and began using the one that was more full. But it was so watery so I kept adding more and more but my clothes seemed to be soaking it right up. And then I noticed: it was Fantastic, the general grease-cutting kitchen cleaner. After adding a bit of the stain cleaner, my clothes came out fine. Fantastic is also a good stain-treater. Who in the heck knew?
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Disappointing Moment: While outside for a cigarette, I noticed I had change, MetroCard and a general collection of stuff in my pants' pocket. I immediately thought: oo, banana, as there is a man with a fruit stand who sells bananas for a quarter. So I begin to dig through my pockets, surprised at the unusal volume I was carrying in there and realize the small round objects amounted to 2 nickles, 1 dime, a penny and the inside button of the pants. Darn, 21 cents and a button is not enough to get a banana.
Friggin Hilarious Moment: A- "Girlfriend got pretty upset when I told her that she should thank you like you'd once said."
T- "Upset because I'd convinced you not to visit the ex and finally end the 4-year break up. And instead you went home and that week you two got together?"
A- "No, I never told her you said she should thank you for that."
"I told her she should thank you for teaching me everything I know about sex."
(This is after 15 minutes of trying to figure out why she's a stone-cold bitch)
A- "Yeah, but she hadn't even met you yet so that probably is why she got upset about that." (um, yeah, she would have been cool with that if she knew me)
Friday, October 26, 2001
For Bess: apparently the MTA is simply not telling us about the
Anthrax scares in our vague "police investigations" that have made getting to work a miserable experience. I know I'd rather deal with Penn Station at rush hour as they divert the F-train out of Brooklyn to the A/C/E than come up to Anthrax at the 34th Street Station which is constantly the one under "investigation."
I find it entirely too funny/ironic that Anthrax, the band, will be playing at yet another benefit concert on November 28th. Others include Twister Sister and Sebastian Bach. I am wondering if the band voluntarily decided to do this or did some washed-up still loving his acid-wash jean jacket and mullet promoter beg them to play for the sheer ludicrousy of being able to have Anthrax at the concert. "Come on, man, it will be freaking hilarious- Anthrax at the benefit concert- all those old people and know-nothing-N'Sync-ers freaking, man, at that, I mean freaking because they don't know, man, they just don't know about good rock n roll man."
There's yet another good reason not to be a drug dealer. The evacuations led to the inadvertently discovery of one man's stash. And Bruce Willis can get real deep when he says stuff like:
"I'm not an action hero anymore and I think it would be inappropriate for me to compare anything that happens in Hollywood and the entertainment industry to the tragic loss of life on September 11"
The twisted ignorance continues to astonish me as the AP Wire shares this story about a Islamic school in Kentucky that burned down that was almost done being renovated. Although it's not yet classified as arson, the school had been a target before and I really don't have that much faith in Americans not to go and act that stupidly.
Of course, what could be worse would be to have the scaffolding collapse around your office building and not know what they heck is going on. I think I would have had a heart attack, gone into severe shock and truly just not be able to function.
I'm pretty upset to see the spelling mistakes in the letters that began this anthrax stir. It seems so sloppy/clumsy to spell penicillin wrong. Truly upsets me that they couldn't take the time to see if everything was spelled right.
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Bravo, the channel that plays random movies that always manage to pull me in and make me forget about the Real World XXIV Reunion Special I wanted to watch, nightly reruns of Thirtysomething that I find to be a great retrospective of yuppies in the 80s allowing me insight I could not grasp as a child also features Inside the Actor's Studio. The guest on last night was some one who makes me venomously angry: Gwyneth Paltrow. I know she has the Academy Award (insert copyright symbol) but I believe that was a particularly shameful year in film wherein only hack-job actresses that are supposedly good-looking were getting roles. She won by the sucky default.
Of course, she is one of some questionable choices for the Actor's Studio including: Ben Affleck. The two of them give a lot of credit to the theory of Seventh Day die-hards that Hollywood is evil devil's work. Most of the time, they tend to have actors who have proven their range and ability to perform a craft: Robert DeNiro, Kevin Spacey, Anthony Hopkins, Glenn Close, Danny Glover, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Dennis Hopper, Gene Wilder,and Susan Sarandon.
I only included Mr. Glover because he was the only black actor I could find who has been on, and not even one of the better black actors of Hollywood. But it pretty much holds true of Hollywood with the grand total of 6 blacks folks ever winning an Academy Award (insert copyright symbol).
The first thing Angel said when he saw I was ready to go off on a tirade about Gwyneth was: "What, was Regina King too busy?" Or how about Cuba Gooding Jr who too won at the big awards for a role wherein he created plenty of pop-culture slogans. Or Michael Rappaport, Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Juliette Lewis, and Giovanni Ribisi. Their saving grace is not having Ray Liotta on who simply creeps me out.
Basically, the Actor's Studio misses a lot of really good actors. I wish I could be in charge of scheduling them. I mean, Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy would have been a more compelling hour over Ms. Paltrow. I'm sure she has a lot to say about how you maintain that type of icon-status consistently, for years on end, hearing annoying girls whine "did you see Buffy last night" and boys reply "Oh, Buf-feee" without losing your shit.
The Actors Studio isn't just a television show either, it's a graduate course at the New School. People who are paying to get a graduate degree in acting don't want to know how to perform a craft, they want to make money in order for their frivilous education to be worthwhile. They want to be like Gwyneth and Ben
The redeeming quality is that Stockard Channing is going to be on. How suiting, on Bravo, Stockard Channing. Just the low-tones upper-class voice needed to put these words together with the accent of Northeastern snobbery that I learned to adopt while in college to rid myself of the nasally Jersey twang. Of course, what am I to expect from a channel named Bravo, with Thirtysomethng as their re-run line-up against Friends, Fraiser, Fresh Prince on other stations. The channel caters to people who indeed say “Bravo, Gwyneth” “Bravo Anthony.” I want to make a show that caters to “Kick ass, Stockard.”
Thursday, October 25, 2001
We can all welcome Turkey into modernity. They are revising codes to meet EU standards and get in on that racket including marriage laws. Highlights include abolishing the law that required women to get their husband's permission to work and raising the marriage age to 18 from 17 for males and 15 for females. Imaging being a 16 year old, poor, married Turkish girl who has to ask her husband's permission to work at McDonald's (because you know they have them there, they even have on in the Taliban.) Next law: women can even refuse to wash the dishes.
Wednesday, October 24, 2001
As no one bothered to suggest any books to me, I went out on my own and picked out the following selections at the library:
Roald Dahl My Uncle Oswald
Irvine Welsh Marabou Stork Nightmares
Paul Auster Timbuktu
Truman Capote Other Voices, Other Rooms
I took out books because I decided that I'm rescheduling the LSATs that I never really wanted to take to begin with, that I just signed up for to appease my mother who thinks I'd do great in law school. To have ammo in the future when I meet someone who thinks they are a smarty-pants hot-shot corporate-lawyer-type out of Harvard that I did better than them on the LSATs. I have too many projects, some big secrets, others not so big secrets including 2 blankets and 21 plexi-panels to do. I have zero desire to study for this test. I made a handful of attempts to do so and they all turned into me wanting to clean the floor, talk to the bird, crochet.
It's been about a year since I learned to crochet. I sat on Marie's floor and she helped me make a small little burgundy square. She lent me a hook and some yarn and I made her brother a sorry-ass scarf while sitting in Prospect Park. Why, exactly, I was in Brooklyn when I still lived in New Jersey with an entire bag of yarn is something that I can't remember. But I still pass the bench that I spent the fall-afternoon on and remember that's where I learned how to crochet. And that's where I remembered I am capable of making things and being inspired. Sometimes, I hate the idea of picking up a hook and others I wish that my hooks were surgically attached to my fingers so I wouldn't have to spend 25 minutes looking for one to begin a project (Oh, to be Tara-Hook-Fingers!).
Yearly, from a month before until her birthday, I let Marie know what the upcoming year looks like and give her a longer-past retrospective on the year she wrapping up and reflecting upon. Because I'm that 10 months 3 days older than she. I like that one point of year when I function more like an older sibling than an equal-footing friend. However, I do not want her to be 24, I do not want to be 25. It feels so old as most people at 25 are finishing their law degree, not postponing their LSATs. It feels so big, it feels so responsible
I always imagined being this age would be more serious, determined, together. I'm waiting for a year that is not numbered but called: not crazy. I thought it was 18, 19, 20, 21, not crazy, 23. Another part of me realizes that I what I invisioned this age as being is pretty boring and basically everything I avoid. It was this sophisticated grown vision I had as a teen when I had no concept of the compromising acrobatics of my integrity I'd need to do to become that adult. I'm not doing a half-bad job so far and not crazy isn't really that important.
Wednesday, October 24, 2001
It's bad to generalize, my sister Kasey and I always get into tiffs because she refuses to allow me to make a generalized statement about anything. When I try to illustrate some point using one generalized statement, she discounts everything I must say because there is no proof that my statement is 100% applicable. For example: people who laugh are more relaxed. Everyone in our family like to laugh therefore we like to be a relaxed family. She comes in with "What if I don't like to laugh, you can't say that."
But I am going to generalize anyhow. In a way that would truly piss her off. I happen to respect news people, journalists. I feel that they take the time to evaluate different sides, maintain a level head and are concerned with giving people the best information they can. The reason why I want to vote for Bloomberg is because he has worked in the news industry for so long. Yes, I know news is owned by these huge corporations with vested interests in their profits (i.e. 20/20 will never do a piece on how horribly they treat the people in character suits in Disney World).
News people prove to me over and over that they are worthy of my respect. I've always had a thing for the big anchors of network television: Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and the like. I really don't like that Barbara Walters though, but I believe this opinion is more widely shared than Dan Rather-haters. Now good old Mr. Rather did not shut down his office when they found anthrax traces in it. He didn't even move to another office. He stayed there.
Because he is saying a bit of Anthrax is not going to kill me much like someone in the office with the flu isn't going to kill me. Now if 50 people had influenza, he'd have something to worry about. Or if the office was dusty with anthrax. But it's not and he did not get hysterical.
Now can we say this much about our government leaders? Each of whom think they are so important that a bit of Anthrax should shut down the government, while we are in the middle of a war? Dan stays at work because we are in middle of a war, he loves his job and feels it his duty to continue on. And he won't be afraid.
It's this attitude of news folks that leads me to respect them and see them as people worthy of holding public office. Of course, it is not generalizible to say that just because they are trust-worthy stand-up people in a news-position, they'd continue to act this way in office. But that's just a risk I'm willing to take.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
I archived. And, yes, a dancing Hobbes is very much so necessary.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
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