4.11.03 – creepy crawlies

i’m not particularly creeped out by spiders, however i am creeped out by large quantities of spiders. working in the front garden today, i walked across the sunny patch of dirt/weeds where i’m trying to grow grass near the driveway, and noticed that wherever i put my foot down, 5 or 6 or more little black spiders would go skittering away from my foot in all directions. ew. there must have been a hatch somewhere in the front yard this week with all the sunny weather. so of course i had to come inside and type “poisonous spider idaho” into the google toolbar, and look at close-up shots of yucky hairy spiders, so now every time i move, the little threads on my cutoff jeans tickle my legs and make me jump. working in the garden just lost all its joy for me.

4.10.03 – everyone’s a critic

today we make our debut as a freelance writer with a review of Spirited Away for the Boise Weekly. Evidently three months of answering phones and stuffing envelopes has finally earned me the opportunity to write the occasional film/book review (i’d do theatre reviews too, but i already work for both of the professional theatres in this town). i have no aspirations to be a critic when i grow up, but hey, someone’s paying me to write AND force my own opinion on thousands of unsuspecting readers? how could i say no?

4.8.03

so happy birthday to me. while it can be tempting to pull the passive-aggressive trick of not mentioning one’s birthday to anyone, and then getting hurt when no one remembers, really, what’s the point of that? you get lots more lovin’ if you tell the world you have a birthday coming. no party plans, unfortunately, as my birthday falls in the middle of a tech week AGAIN this year, so i’ll be working approximately 10am – 11pm today. this is okay, really, because i’m horrible at throwing parties. that’s where andy comes in – i’m good at organizing and details, and he’s the popular one, so when we have parties, i make sure we have food, and he makes sure we have friends.

4.7.03

yesterday’s yucky snowy day perked up at the end with the appearance of a free ticket to see tori amos, courtesy of nick. the evening was wholly thrown over to nostalgia once we discovered that we were sitting in the exact same (front row) seats that we’d sat in about eight years ago when i dragged a reluctant nick to see her boys for pele tour back in high school. the show featured a nice mix of her music from various albums all the way back to little earthquakes, so that those of us who’ve been too poor to buy a CD in recent years could enjoy new versions of old favorites. but god damn that woman can play a piano.

being in the technical half of the business myself, tho, i’m easily distracted by production details – noting the stripe of glow tape on the side of the Roadside Cafe sign that flew in mid show, watching the moving lights for their color-changing tricks, irked that the backdrop didn’t match up exactly at the seam in the middle and looked like cheap plywood, watching the stage hands moving about backstage, turning around to see if the stage manager was in the booth in the back of the house. i’m probably a pretty annoying person to go to a show with.

4.6.03 – front yard, 11:15am

no wonder i can’t get anything to grow in my yard. these april snowstorms are fun in a freakish sort of way, but the accompanying seasonal affective disorder is starting to get old.

4.2.03 – sulking, in perspective

of course, one cannot ignore the fact that moping because of the weather is a luxury i am afforded because i live in a politically stable city, i have a job, a home, and currency that is still worth something. something tells me that hunter-gatherer tribes of the past and iraqi citizens of today spend less time being depressed because it’s gloomy outside. it’s 34 degrees this afternoon, and weather.com is promising rain/snow showers for the next five days. still, it could be a blinding desert sand storm that i’m up against. i can’t stomach war news 24/7. there’s something sickening about the way that experts gather on NPR every afternoon to dissect each tactical move with the cool nonchalance apropos of a football game. i heard an interview with a couple of marines still awaiting orders in North Carolina on the BBC tonight. question: how do you feel being left here now that more than half of your fellow marines have shipped out? response: well, the traffic’s a lot better.

4.1.03 – sulking

depression comes on the heels of the dark, rain-filled clouds of an april twilight. it crouches on my chest with little cat feet, encourages me to lay on the couch watching network sitcoms rather than getting up and doing something, anything. enjelani‘s list of ways to fight the lurking depression all ring true but none of them appeal when i hit the lows. i tend to move through my life at 100 mph; for reasons as trivial as the weather i grind to the occasional halt and inertia makes it hard to get going again. sulky or not, i still have to go to rehearsal tonight. my own recipe for fighting the blues: 1) turn on lots of articial light 2) close the curtains against the gathering darkness 3) trade norah jones for the josie and the pussycats soundtrack, 6) treat myself to a sugary coffee treat at the flying M, 6) stay busy. move faster than the depression can.

3.31.03 – the united states of iraq

or, the chilling thing i saw at the mall yesterday:

the Made In Idaho Or USA store (i’m not making that title up) was featuring “Support Our Troops” t-shirts with an american flag-themed design in the front window. well, not terribly surprising. but what caught my eye was the other t-shirt display: the one promoting “Free Iraq” t-shirts decorated up with a graphic design that combined the US and Iraqi flags into a single emblem. talk about propaganda. what are the chances that the US goverment is actually manufacturing these shirts and distributing them through private resellers?

3.30.03 – a quandary:

option 1: assistant stage manage. good money, fun company, job’s in idaho where i want to spend my summer. work will not be terribly challenging or artistically interesting, however, the overall quality of the work will be first-rate. have to suck up the fact that the company is giving me a pretty significant demotion from last summer, as a result of office politics rather than me being incompetent. will have to be an assistant to someone i once had a summer fling with.

option 2: direct, stage manage and teach community classes for a young shakespeare company in new hampshire. earn $0 aside from room and board. do work that will push me outside of my comfort level, get me to try new things and discover what i’m capable of and what i want to do. runs the risk that the overall quality of the work will suck. have to be away from andy for at least six weeks. have to keep my day job for an extra month. risk being too poor to be able to move to chicago in the fall as planned.

which is why i haven’t been able to pull together a coherent thought for slithy tove in the past week. what to do: sell out for a carefree and profitable summer, or throw myself into the fire?

3.21.03 – more war-related rant

i swear if i hear the term “shock and awe” on the news one more time today i’m going to vomit on the radio in protest. they make it sound like they’re talking about fireworks, not a bombing campaign. it makes me sick.

the boise community is all a twitter today because on wednesday the Weekly published our regular column by New York-based syndicated columnist Ted Rall with the headline “Don’t Support Our Troops.” i admit i was shocked when i looked at the headline, but actually reading the column reveals that Mr. Rall’s opinion is pretty much in line with the newspaper’s anti-war stance. i’m not sure about the decision to run such an inflammatory headline (i’m just the receptionist, i tell callers repeatedly, but that doesn’t stop them from making bodily threats and 20-minute rants on things completely unrelated to anything), but the real problem is that most of our furious callers (a sales agent for a local news station is calling for a boycott of our advertisers, distribution sites are telling us to pick up our boxes and stop delivery…) didn’t actually read the article, just the headline. i hate ignorant anger. the paper’s stance, and mine, is that the best way to bring our troops home safely to their families and loved ones is not to send them out there at all. its not really about not supporting troops, its about not supporting the administration. not supporting the people who come up with crap like “shock and awe” to describe how they’re going to flatten baghdad.

to borrow a clip out of Rall’s column:

“Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, opposes war with Iraq. Despite this stance, he suggests that Americans should set aside their political differences…’When the war begins, if the war begins,’ says Kerry, ‘I support the troops and I support the United States of America….'”

it’s so easy to take a middle-of-the-road stance like that: to oppose war right up till it starts, and then throw in the cards and cheer along with CNN, praying that they’ll nuke baghdad quickly and efficiently and then come home to their families. that’s bullshit. if the war is wrong, it’s wrong before and during and after. you can’t jump sides just to be on the winning team. supporting our troops, to me, means not sending them into an unjust war. it means not sacrificing their lives over oil prices. other people need to support our troops by sending over shipments of coffee or valentines, by waving flags and holding prayer sessions, and i do understand that. but i’m supporting our troops by NOT supporting an administration that would force soldiers to make the grave moral decision to take the life of a fellow human being without the least assurance that it will bring about a greater good for the world.

my anger isn’t focused on individual soldiers. i’ll be glad that they’re back home with their families. i respect that devoting one’s life to the military (and that, really, is the potential price of anyone who joins up) is an incredible sacrifice, and i respect and appreciate the people who have sworn to protect the country i live in. i imagine that one of the hardest part of being a soldier is trusting, unconditionally, that our leaders are doing the right thing. but as a civilian, that’s not my job.