Rose

I quit my job and took a new one. I was finding it very stressful and unpleasant to try and juggle

• the full time, high responsibility, many evenings required nonprofit job
• two classes of not difficult but annonyingly time consuming library school
• the part time job to make ends meet.
  
• real life. including trying to have a baby with Jen.

So a full time job at Kaplan presented itself, with slightly more money, a schedule that is much more flexible, a responsibility level that is much more appropriate relative to me pursing school and trying to make connections and move ahead in library land, and I actually love teaching for them, so...I took it. And I'm excited. But things have been a little awkward at work of course. Not least because a lot of people have left from my dept in the last 2 years. But everyone had their reasons. And I have mine, and I think my boss is trying to appreciate that, even if she really really really hates it at the same time.

 Where've I BEEN? 

Rearranging my whole life, basically. Still working on it.  More soon. 

In the meantime - 

This weather is UNACCEPTABLE. if this is another one of this shitty, rainy summers...I am going to be displeased.

My friend nicole has a voicemail number and you should call it. She leaves messages, you leave a message. Its sort of like postsecret without the suicidal levels of depression. Or Overheard in New York without the other person in the conversation. Or like uh, leaving a message for your friend. 

Anyway, call her.

1.339.368.KOCO

skype: misskoco 

You can listen to other messages here. http://misskoco.podbean.com

Some people are freaks. Some people are sweet. Some people are boring. Some people are me.

 

From factoflife

The daytime soap opera “As the World Turns” has had an ongoing storyline about a young gay couple (Luke and Noah)-- even if you don't watch the show, chances are you have come across mentions of it here on LJ or elsewhere on the net. The couple haven’t kissed since last September; recently they finally did get a couple of kisses on screen and it has caused the AFA (among others) to start a campaign against Proctor and Gamble, the sponsors of the show.

You can read about the American Family Association campaign here:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=126673

The AFA were kind enough to include the YouTube video of the kiss scene in their email with the warning "Content is repulsive." (BCH PLZ!)

http://youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Ddd9xCntVqc4

Procter and Gamble is conducting poll about continuing the Luke and Noah storyline. Even if you don't watch but don't want to surrender to one group's hysterical homophbia and their trying to enforce unnecessary censorship, please call:

1-800-331-3774

Press 2 for the Luke and Noah poll, and then 1 to vote to continue the storyline.

Then post this info in your own LJ. That way we can reach more people.

I voted, and I'm not a soap opera fan. (Well, not daytime soaps...hey Dynasty, hey Melrose Place!) It only takes 30 seconds.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

I sometimes read books many many times. If I read it for school AND read it again for pleasure, its bold and underlined.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment - I originally read for school, for fucking SUMMER READING. For the next few years after that I decided to make it my summer reading every year and perversely read Crime and Punishment on the beach.
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose - my grandpa was like, if you read this, I'll be impressed. I did. I can only assume he was.
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey - rocks!
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad - rocks less.
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner - i have like 4 copies of the kite runner.
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex - this book fucking pissed me off.
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West - stopped after the freaky animal sex club. Whatever.
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath - one of my all time favorite books.
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections - pissed me off
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - pissed me off slightly less.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things - my friend and I had Neil Diamond sign it!
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit - i fucking hated the hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

There's an article in the NYTImes sunday magazine about young gay guys getting married. I'd link to it, but I think its shitty, so I won't, lest anyone mistake the link as a recommendation to read.

The writer starts out by saying that he was intrigued that many young (i think he says under 26 years old) gay men are getting married in Mass. and he wanted to figure out why. He talks to a few gay couples who are married or getting married and comes to the scintillating conclusion that they got married because they felt like it. Much like young straight people who get married, these young guys feel like they really love each other, want to stay together forever, enjoy validating their relationship in the eyes of their family and seem to think it'll be fun to be married. I don't see why that's newsworthy.

There are some allusions to a more complex context within which these marriages work - for example the view of monogamy taken by these young gay couples vs. older gay male couples. That was slightly interesting. Or what happens when young gay marriages don't work and you're a 26 year old divorced homo. Ok, maybe that's sort of a topic.

And maybe this is typical of me, but I found the author's blithe dismissal of any discussion of gay female marriages really irksome. The author states that yes, young lesbians seemed to be marrying at a rate 2x that of young gay men, but he didn't want to look into that cause its known that women like to get married and settle down. I don't know, the whole thing just seems really bullshitty. I can't deny that lesbians are are on the whole more likely to become committed faster, to have kids, to move in and all of that...but dismissing a clearly relevant trend cause all girls dream of growing up and being a bride, seems lazy. The author might have gotten a lot more mileage out of comparing young gay vs. young lesbian marriages. Where there different reasons for the male vs. female choice to pursue marriage? different socioeconomic status? Different ways of celebrating, or rules for conduct within the union. Or even, expanding on the sentence about a different view of monogamy to delve deeper into the differences between young gay men vs. older gay men getting married. Just SOMETHING.

As it is, the article doesn't really go anywhere. I actually do see why this might be an interesting topic, young gay men so eager for committment, but without any historical discussion of gay male relationships, its totally useless. Its like the author thought "wow, its SO WEIRD that my friends are getting married" and then wrote an article about how weird it was.

I flirted with Jen unabashedly last night. To the point of sexily doing pushups in a cute bra and panties. 

But no. 
no no no. 

She says she's stressed out, not in the mood, and decides to instead of sex, she'd prefer to critque my ability to perform budget analysis. She finds my projections unfounded. We engage in an energized debate about the way I think, the way she thinks and how the differences frustrate us. We conclude that as frustrating as it is, we actually compliment each other.

Heated up for real now, I try again. 
Sexy sex sex? 

No. 

I decide I'm gonna have to do something about this myself and retire to the bedroom. But its just not the same without her. I pout. I drink some wine. I sigh, on demand an episode of the L word and get ready for bed. 

I'm in bed, about to sleep. Jen comes in. Jen leaves. Jen comes in again. Lays down. Topless. 

Demands to know why I persist in ignoring her. 

I giggle. Hot sex ensues.

Just now on CNN, they were making fun of Hillary, calling her a wonk, and some talking head scoffed (getting it slightly wrong), "She's got a 17 point plan on the bee pollen issue."

I heard this from the other room and shouted "THANK GOD!" Dissapearing bees is a serious and scary thing! Where are the bees?! A plan to to investigate and rectify the problem is appropriate! Seriously!

Finally, someone tells me about the shit I need to know! This doesn't make up for no one mentioning DEBS or lesbian Buffy, but I am pleased that Darbs was kind enough to send me a link to a pretty fascinating Salon.com article on Hilary hate, Obama supporters and feminism. It doesn't end as strong as it starts, but the information included in the peice is interesting because it takes the troubling undertone of agressive sexism that can appear as a note in the Obama rallying cry - especially among priveledged white males and females -  and manages to consider it in the context of this election while at the same time separating this problem from what lever actually gets pulled in the voting booth. Because its not the same thing. 

I also think its interesting that the young(ish) priveledged female is front and center in this article, because I don't know when I last read something that so extensively quoted women in their late 20s/early 30s. I agree with the conclusion that regardless of the outcome of this election, for this group (which includes me) is that the issue of sexism, the need for feminism, has begun to be reexamined. In my own experience, coming out as a Hillary supporter has been just that - a process of becoming proud to claim the association, becoming informed enough to defend my position. And because Hillary is a woman, a large part of that process had to be tied to me addressing my position as a woman. Which isn't really something I've ever done before, outside of queer circles. What happened inside of queer circles is relevant, but I won't delve into it at the moment. The point is that there's a constant misrecognition of feminine motivation as something necessarily titillating, or when it can't be (and with Hill, it isn't) as something malignant. And well, maybe it is, maybe its both of those things. Because really what is happening now is that women are in a position to produce the content of our culture in a public way, when before it was mainly private or...I guess the word I want is gentle. But it doesn't have to be now. Women can just stand up and say, I want to run things. I want to make the world in my image. And I suppose that does excite and threaten the very form of society. Which I think is really really really cool. So I guess I'm a feminist.

I should be stressed out, I suppose. I have a lot of work to take care of at my job, I am supposed to be raising tons and tons of money for the gala over the next two weeks, plus keeping up on individual giving and things are rough, considering that the economy is tanking. Plus, I have school bullshit, a simple but annoyingly detailed project due on Wednesday, a quiz tomorrow, a bunch of other shit piling up behind that. But its like...I wouldn't say I don't CARE. I care a lot. But it'll be alright, one way or another. We made $25,000 today. And anyway, I care about other things more. I care about Jen. Spending time with her. Kissing. About working on our babymaking. About the fact that its getting warmer out. That I can do 15 decent pushups now. That people on the internet really dig my tibette fanfiction. That Jill Dolan thought my blog commentary was smart. That Nicole and I can be pals again, and that I got to see Jessica for lunch last week and she bought me a cupcake.

I'm under a ton of pressure but I feel like I'm on top of the world. Am I actually getting away with this?

My life is completely out of control, especially at work, so of course I thought I'd take the time to play a round of M.A.S.H. at www.playmash.com.

The results:

You will live in Apartment.
You will drive a purple saab.
You will marry Jen and have 7 kids.
You will be a unemployed in LA.

The apartment doesn't bother me, although how we'll fit 7 kids in I don't know. But as long as I'm with Jen, I'll be happy, even somewhere completely fucked like LA. The purple saab...well, that's just the SWEET icing on the cake.

Hi guys. Im looking for some bette icons, specifically ones that focus on her bossy side, and the kind of hilarious stuff she says in pursuit of bossiness. Anyone know where I can find some like this?

I always forget this, but it happens every spring. Soon after daylight savings time kicks in (or is lifted, however it works), I become clinically unable to sleep past 7:30 in the morning. In the winter its 8:30, which also sucks but isn't nearly as bad as 7:30. Especially considering that last night I went to bed at 3:30 AM. fuckin' fuck my finely calibrated internal clock.

So....I'm up.

Last night was fun, we went to a joint birthday party for my friends Kiersten and Kate. It was held in some loungey bar on Delancey, which was fine, in and of itself, but was populated with the lamest crowd of 23 year olds who recently moved here from long jersey island. I don't usually hang out at straight bars unless they're dives, or pubs, which kind of have a different scene going. Whenever I do end up at a straight bar thats more meat-markety, I am always astounded by the fact that there are usually 100000000 guys for every 1 girl. ANd then the dudes hang out together and text each other and generally ignore the girls. Which then makes it kind of a gay bar. I want to tell the straight people this, to HELP them, but I think they'll react badly.

We had a private section, and within our section, things were fabulous. Kate and Kiersten insisted upon swanky dress and everyone looked AWESOME. Three dudes were in tuxes, girls were all flaunting cleavage in cocktail dresses. Glamor abounded. Which had the amusing effect of making the dumbasses in the rest of the bar look like a tranny mess in comparison.

We took a lot of pictures of each other and in at least one of them, I looked really pretty and managed to smile without showing all of my teeth and my entire gumline. YAY!

I really enjoyed dressing up and putting on makeup and heels, and I'm considering dressing like a grown woman more often. I've been feeling that I need new clothes, my ten year old boy clothes are all wearing thin, getting holes or just boring me lately. I don't think I could do lady drag every day, but I do think I'd like some more options for when I do want to fancy up. I need to take stock of my makeup too, organize, purge, restock. AND I started wearing perfume. I smell nice! I'm a girl!

We'll see how long this lasts....

I've totally been enjoying a new album, and I'ma go out on a limb and recommend it to y'all, even though it may not be everyone's cup of tea. The album is called For Lovers, Dreamers, and Me by Alice Smith and the title is crazy apt. The songs are really just for people to make out to, or daydream to, or for Alice Smith to think about shit that happened to her while she listens to her own album. The lyrics are sometimes transcendant and clever and sometimes just short of that, but no matter what at least they're never completely trite. Which is a pretty big accomplishment when you go as far as having a song called "Fake is the New Real" on your album. I think it generally gets categorized as "new soul" but in reality the sound is an unexpected mix of r&b, pop, country, rock, blues, funk,..its sort of crazy, but just like with the lyrics, Alice is completely committed and it seems organic to her experience, so it works out. Anyway, I dig it, and the more I listen to it, the more I dig it even more.

I found the album because the song Dream was featured in an episode of the L word, backing up a crazyawesome Tina/Bette makeout scene. Dream is definetely one of the best songs on the album. Other good songs (which don't necessarily have that much in common with Dream) are Desert Song, Love Endeavor, and Woodstock. Check 'em out on her website http://www.alicesmith.com/#

Or, enjoy the music along with the making out...

TK asked me to comment on Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and since I was just thinking about her the other day, I will share the thoughts I had while sitting in traffic on the BQE, listening some NPR commentators discuss Sarkozy's visit to the Queen and how his wife Bruni, a gorgeous woman with a warm demeanor and elegant manners who speaks impeccable English (as well as Italian and French and probably some other languages too) will um...probably be an asset when trying to make pals w. royalty.

"Hmmm...I really like those Carla Bruni songs I have on my ipod. I should by her whole albums."

"Hmmm...How hot is Carla Bruni really? I mean, she's empiraclly hot, but is she someone *I* should be spending more time getting hot for? I should investigate this. I mean, she speaks several languages. That alone is hot. Yeah. I need to google image her." 

"Hmmm....How is it that the French people get so lucky to have such a hottie first lady? Are they just doing this so they can continue to lord their sophistication over schlumpy Americans? Look at our first ladies. Ugh. UGH. Nasty and DRY. Jeez. America. Can we not TAKE an attractive, accomplished, woman?"

"Well. *I* can take a woman like that."

"America should be more like me."

I've found the secret to good health and productivity. For me, anyway. 

The magic formula is:

-writing fanfiction
-doing pushups
-standing in line at the Park Slope post office like an asshole.

That's all I've been doing for the past few days and my skin is clear, I'm energized and writing, I'm craving less sugar and I finally got my hands on guitar hero for wii. Its a miracle!
 

Yesterday we went to Jen's mom's for Easter. Its become traditional for my mom to join us on this Easter visit, and this year, my mom brought her gentleman friend Dale. Its been like 100000  years that my mom and Dale have been hanging out and I have absolutely no idea at this point if their relationship is serious, unserious, existent, non existent, sexual, nonsexual, committed, uncommitted, platonic, socratic or otherwise.

The point is, we're in the car on the way home, and I had been making reference to the L word all day, to tease Jen since she hates it with a firey passion. And my mom says "What is the L word about anyway?" And I was thrilled, because I love telling people the plots of things. Its really probably my favorite leisure activity.

So I explained the general outline, and I was trying to convey how Bette is clearly the most important lesbian in the universe or something, and Dale, who had previously been watching a movie on his ipod touch (antisocial shit like that is part of the reason for his indeterminite status w/ my mom), takes out his headphones and pipes up "The L word is back on?"

My mom, incredulous, from the back seat, "Dale?! YOU watch the L word?"

And he was like, "I watch Jennifer BEALS."

And then he and I fangirled out on Beals, and we reminisced about Flashdance, but agreed she's even more gorgeous now, and we totally crowed about how Bette is the KING on the L word and blindingly amazingly awesome. I'm sure my mom found the whole thing hideous, because she hates, hates HATES the instinct to be a fan, and has totally despised all my fancrushes (don't ever mention Gillian Anderson to my mom. She'll like, spit at the mere mention.) and probably found it weird that Dale and i were excited by and attracted to the same person.

But that is just the power of Beals.

In other L word news, i wrote some fanfiction. I figured it would be a fun, low stress way to get some positive momentum going with my writing. And it is! I have gotten enthusiastic feedback and I'm totally energized to work on a non fanfiction story that I've been meaning to get to for a while. Still, I'm kind of embarassed. Not about my writing really, but about the fact that even though I am a grown woman and I complain about not having time for important things like ummm....developing my career or making money or doing my school work, i've been putting efforts into something as non-effective as fanfiction. But having written a thesis on it, I realize that that the value of fanfiction is in the affect, not in the effect. So uh...em. Heresalink. If you want. Its two very short "chapters" at the moment, just cause I have the attention span of a gnat and need constant ego stroking from comments to get anything done. Oh, and the title is hideously lame. I know that. I couldn't think of anything better.
"chapter" 1
"chapter" 2


Also, on the season finale last night, Helena Peabody, a character who was extremely rich and had suffered a reversal of fortune, wore an outfit that I not only can afford, but actually own. The whole point is that she's not all about money anymore and she's totally comfortable with herself and living like a pleb, but I was was like, wow. Wow Helena. You've fallen pretty far to end up on wardrobe par with ME.

I am at the gay library. I have been here for 35 minutes. Thus far:

A gay man danced a self choreographed clogging solo.

I've handled at least 10 separate pornographic books. (hardcore, gay.) Spanning the genres of, erotica, vampire fiction, locker room porn and comic books.

A lesbian couple came in. One of them had laryngitis because she "raised the energy level for tibet" on thursday in northhampton. She used the library desk to confess to me as if I were a priest. She confessed to IMing with a lady from puerto rico. Her gf, who stood awkwardly by, seemed less than thrilled about that.

The woman begged to be able to take out a gay porn comic book. I decided to let her, even though technically her address is a bit far away to comply with our policies. They gays are always making exceptions to other gays. I can let one crazy lesbian take out some dick drawings.

Having checked out the book, the woman proceeded to ask me to mail her electric bill and to give me her email address, again, with her girlfriend standing right there. She told me she had considered transitioning, but then reconsidered. Tangentially, the gay comic book had something to do with that struggle.

She described finding Harvey Firestein talking with a gorgeous drag queen in the gay garden here. He recommended they go to Sammy's Noodle Shop. The long suffering gf was starving and she asked for directions. I gave them. Laryngitis lady then took a vow of silence and promptly broke it. They left. Two minutes later she was back, stood in the sun, bowed, lined up her feet and started out again.

How can I ever work in a non-gay library after this?

My office is kinda cute and quiet today. Some people took off for good friday so there are less of us than usual, and the big boss isn't here. I'm hung over and quietly working on getting some mailings out for a board member and listening to pod casts and eavesdropping on everyone. We all brought in lots of dvds for our co-worker who is having surgery so she can recouperate with entertainment. And the business manager and the newly appointed office manager are giggling (literally giggling!) with pleasure over their new paper shredder.  Everyone's being really adorable and its finally sunny out again, even though the wind is fucking ridiculous. Life MIGHT be worth living after all. 

The awesome time I had last night that involved a lot of wine and a lot of friends and a lot of nakedness when Jen and I got home might have something to do with my improved outlook.

Oh, and a question that arose at the bar last night...Can an orgy consist of only three people? or Does it have to  be four or more to technically be called an orgy? The random woman with dreads coming out of the bar bathroom said definitively it's four or more and she looked like she knew of what she spoke. I'm inclined to agree, but there may be certain cases where a threeway could also be termed an orgy...Thoughts?