Treating tumors!

Hollywood Forever, forever ago.

The last interview that I had was the most grueling one EVER, but also really great. The worst interview experience that I have ever had was just prior to finishing up my master’s degree. I hated Tallahassee with an intense passion, but interviewed for a research analyst gig there with the university, something to do with investigating donors and fundraising. All seemed to be going excellently, until I happened to look down at the floor beneath my bare, crossed legs, and saw the pile of skin. Yep, my skin. A mound of dead white skin flakes a top the dark grey carpet. Quite difficult to miss, and the result of a not-quite-healed sunburn and the continued crossing and uncrossing of my legs, causing just enough friction to snow on their floor. I didn’t get that job.

My lovely questions, from the lovely Ken (and I’m embarrassed to admit that these were kindly sent to me approximately one year ago, ay yi yi):

1) Disqualifying dog, cats, or lovers; what is your most valued possession? How did you come to acquire it?

Voila! My Joe’s Place pint glass. Joe’s was one of my favorite undergrad drinking hole – pre-age of legality bar adventures, friends who were also bartenders, wood booths carved with missives and obscenities from the ages. And the “Home of the Hawks”, as the scant lettering that remains on the pint glass will also tell you. Procurement of this glass was somehow attached to a particular special involving cheap beer, which is about as specific as my collegiate memories get. This would have been sometime between 1998 and 2000. It has since survived moves from Iowa City to Portland, to Tallahassee, to Los Angeles, to Austin. And a lot of glasses have died shattered deaths while in my care, A LOT. But amazingly, not this one. I love it for its sheer will to exist.

2) Of all my four friends, you are the only one to go to school to be a Librarian. Apart from the obvious coolness/sexiness/financial lucre involved in librarianism, what drew you to this field?

I wish I could honestly claim an evangelical calling to librarianship, like some of my more noble colleagues, but not so much. After getting a rather impractical bachelor’s degree (I dare someone to put forth legit career options for a BA in Art History), I knew that more academia was in my future. Librarianship seemed the perfect blend of practicality and flexibility, and the library environment is one in which I’ve always been comfortable. My mom used to take me to my small-town library every week – I would check out as many books as I could carry, and finish some of them off even before making it back home from the library (it was a twenty minute drive). And there’s the whole freedom of information and access for the masses and anti-censorship business – that sort of stuff make me proud to be a librarian. For as surly as I can be, I actually really like helping people (maybe just strangers), and it’s also nice to have an instantly recognizable profession. Our new upstairs neighbor exclaimed “I like librarians!” when J was making introductions. Although that sort of made me feel like a breed of dog.

3) You’ve traveled a long way from where you were born. Under what circumstances would you live in your home town again? (Hint: You’re not allowed to answer Under No Circumstances.)

Should global climate change eventually eliminate harsh winter weather in the Midwest, I could do it. I would happily be a vegetable/herb/alpaca/goat/llama farmer in Iowa, if dealing with horrific winters was not a factor. Yep, that’s it. I wouldn’t expect to leave the house much though – each time I go back to visit, it seems more and more like a distant planet.

4) You’re a vegetarian who doesn’t watch television. Would you rather:
Watch an entire series of “Mama’s Boys” (a reality show about bachelor’s choosing future wives with their mothers) in one weekend (complete with broadcast commercials)
Eat nothing but roasted beef stew chunks for an entire weekend.
Spend one day eating nothing but roasted beef stew chunks and watching Mama’s Boys.
Explain the rationale belying your choice.

Oh man. This is a cruel question. It takes quite a lot for me to grow tired of watching and harshly judging pathetic people, so I’d have to go with the Mama’s Boys viewing option. As much as it might make my stomach churn, the thought of ingesting dead mammal flesh makes me want to retch. Really, just the thought. And I can theoretically knit while watching this trainwreck, yeah? Because I couldn’t even get through a full minute of that clip.

5) A wizard provides you with male genitalia. The catch: you only have it for 90 minutes. Overcome as you are with the randiness of genitalia nouveau, would you spend the ninety minutes alone, or would you attempt to find a partner? How much does the amount of time you have this genitalia affect your decision? (You are not allowed to bugger your boyfriend, says the Wizard.)

Well, infidelity is infidelity, temporary man parts or not, so alone it would be. The timeframe isn’t really so much a factor, although that might depend upon how much I did or did not enjoy the condition. Penises are hilarious. And don’t even get me started on balls. HA.

Pirate made an escape yesterday, for the first time ever. I never imagined that I would be wandering around yelling his name, tearful, terrified, and panicked. Worst feeling ever. Apparently our front door has to be shut in a rather particular way to completely latch closed. He could not have been outside on his own for more than five minutes, and a neighbor had scooped him up in the parking lot. Once we discovered he was missing (about an hour and a half – both of us thought that he was with the other, I was napping and J was computering), it took no more than ten minutes to locate him, but those were the longest ten minutes ever. What sort of reward is enough, and how much would a billboard ad run? How many flyers should we make, 500, 5,000? Thank god for Texans and their dog-lovin’ nature, because if this had happened in Los Angeles, we would have never seen him again, he would have been stolen or sold. And of course when we retrieved him, it was like picking him up from a playdate – romping around with a pomeranian, and looking slightly confused as to why we were so distraught and effusive. I love that he’s not one of those shaky timid chihuahuas, but his confidence is perhaps a bit too far at the other end of the spectrum.

In other news, my hair is back to an inch in length. Justin is up, 2-1, in Trivial Pursuit matches. I have never seen so many tattoos, executed so poorly. I’m caught up on my long-ignored museum podcasts, and recommend the Tate’s in particular. The grocery stores here are amazing, as are the parks. And parks are our agenda for today, so more on that later.

Hi, I have an inquiry.

What is the size of the jacuzzi in your king jacuzzi suite?

So, you’d say two normal size people?

So it’s nothing spectacular.

Oh, okay.

Thanks. Bye.

Also, this band, anyone? I’ve been listening to the last album lately, and apparently I’m into singing saws. Who knew.

Second, le tranny wreck! So we’re strolling along, me with a bellyful of my usual vegan macaroni and cheese, J with a bellyful of some Greek breakfast pita business, enjoying deliciously robust Guatemalan coffee (which I’m still a bit hopped up on now) and some gentle rain. Suddenly, this scene is marred by a blur of vehicular motion, accompanied by some hearty engine revving. Not 15 feet ahead of us, a 1987 Ford Escort (two-door, and white, dotted with large spots of primer, just in case you were wondering) has aggressively lunged between stalls of organic dried fruits and locally produced goat cheese, having emerged from an adjacent apartment complex parking lot, and come to rest in the middle of the highly-populated pedestrian walkway. Chaos ensues. Enraged market-goers try to physically remove the driver from the car, and there’s yelling. Lots and lots of yelling. Angry admonishments directed at the driver, as well as requests between bystanders to cease violent action against him. The police arrive within five minutes, and miraculously, no one is hurt, except for one gentleman who punched the errant car’s windshield in a fit of rage – dude bloodied up his fist. Such a relief that it was nothing like this, because that was tearing through my (and I’m sure a ton of other people’s) brain. As we move along, the Ford-operator is finally visible to me through the crowd. As he’s being handcuffed and gently manhandled, as is LAPD’s specialty, it becomes apparent that the cause of all of this insanity is a transvestite. Makes the earlier cries of “stop punching the freak” slightly more understandable, but only slightly. I’d guess early-60s in age, with standard-male clothes, full-on female make-up, and a really disheveled wig. If you’ve seen The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, he looked a bit like Terence Stamp’s character, but with less dignity and more heroin.

I love Los Angeles.

“At the bottom of these reports, the number of unique titles either circulated or uncirculated prints, as well as a separate entry for the number of pies that were either circulated or uncirculated. “

I guess I should be glad that it didn’t produce any actual statistics for pastry circulation?