2.4.03 – netscape: you’re still here?

ugg. another unpleasant reminder that slithy tove still looks like crap on netscape. still no time, a year after the first time i noticed it, to trouble shoot. no, it’s not a lack of time, it’s a lack of interest. *shrug* so yeah. use ie, then slithy tove is all pretty (and readable). it’s like asking your date to wear the rose-coloured glasses so that you don’t actually have to brush your hair: efficient, but in poor taste.

2.2.03 – courage to realize our dreams

when i was a kid i wanted to be an astronaut. i created this whole character, that i wrote stories about, a woman named kimberly. she was the team psychologist at NASA, and her job was to help keep the other astronauts calm when they got scared or lonely for earth during long missions. she lived in cape canaveral, florida, where it was always sunny, and she was strong and smart and had loved the stars since she was a kid.

i wonder if they even had time to be frightened.

2.01.03 – dodged the bullet

yes! it’s february, which means that my least favorite month is over, and the january blahs can recede for another 11 months. not that february is always better, but there’s something so droll about january that just makes me want to bury my head in a pillow and not come out until february starts. it might have something to do with seasonal affective disorder. maybe i need one of those huge fake sun lamps to cheer me. i try to stay really busy instead.

i thought my entry on how to get to heaven might spur comments from a devout christian out there somewhere; the only thing i’ve noticed is a huge influx in the number of viruses arriving daily in slithy tove’s email box (ha, like i don’t have norton utilities watching my back). maybe this is god’s way of punishing me for being flippant about his kingdom: he sends my email address to some bot that’s been frantically emailing out files with names like goldfish.exe to see if i’ll fall for it.

1.28.03 – shape shifter

7:45am – stage hand at the morrison center for the performing arts

10:30am – receptionist at the boise weekly

5pm – sound technician at the boise contemporary theatre

11pm – girlfriend

12:19am – dreamer

1.26.03 – how to get to heaven

someone’s been papering our cars, mailbox and doorstep with religious tracts like this lately. perhaps one of the neighbors has discovered we’re living in sin and is trying to show us the light. in this one, heaven appears to be a shining gold castle, and the children who get to go to heaven are beautiful blonde 1950’s-style children. in the panel that says, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”, the children are shooting dirty looks at a third boy who is waving a cigarette and a bottle of booze. i suppose that we’re the kid with the booze in this analogy. i appreciate the concern for the state of my soul, really, and i respect the fact that the people bringing the word of god to me really think they’re doing a good thing for me, but some of the pamphlets aren’t quite as friendly: “How can ye escape the damnation of hell? Your iniquities have separated between you and your god, and YOUR SINS have hid his face from you: bad TV movies, music, games, materialism, adultery, killing babies, homosexuality, cussing, drinking, smoking…FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME!.” does this mean i’m going to rot in hell for watching Blind Date last night? and then there was the one detailing all the advantages of virginity and the crime against god and humanity that birth control is. i respect our religous differences, there’s just no need to litter my doorstep with them. i’ve made peace with my god; i’m kind to animals, and he lets me watch tv now and then.

1.25.03 – over breakfast

it’s eleven am, we’re standing in the kitchen, pajama-ed and barefoot, making freezer hash browns and scrambled eggs. where would you be right now if we hadn’t moved in together? i ask suddenly, as a vision of an alternate-self flashes before my eyes, unbidden. probably living at our respective parents’ houses, was the joint conclusion. i look around and we’re surrounded by our house: items filched from parents’ garages and our own apartments and garage sales that are already losing their possessives: it’s not my garlic press or your cat anymore, it’s the garlic press, our cat. i think how professionally barren i’ve felt these past few weeks, then i look out the window at the neighbor’s cats and i realize that we’ve been busy building a life together.

1.22.03 – from the slithy tove inbox

To: brillig@slithy-tove.net

Subject: Something to write about…

Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 17:26:23 -0500

I happened upon your page today due to the “tiny tove” search you dislike so much. You shouldn’t let it bother you, though. The world is a strange place with many different interests, including your public journal, which I have oddly enjoyed reading…You and the other Tove share something in common – a need to, or simply the basic enjoyment of, sharing yourself with others…

TTL

the comparison is not unreasonable, given that there’s something kind of exhibitionist about blogging, although i think that’s probably where the similarity between myself and porn stars ends. i could wax poetic on this, i guess, but i think the point was made nicely already. it seems like movie stars (of all types) have more, shall i say, polish? when it comes to their presentation of themselves to the world. this is the raw, ugly, always-changing me, all my musings and my insecurities, the pictures of my cat and the books i’ve been reading, the freaks i meet on the street and the freaks i call my own. i won’t say that bloggers (such as myself) never make pretenses or edit themselves for the public forum, but i love the blog for its confessional-like format. i mean, where else can you read about lauren’s magical knickers?

i think this is what qualifies as meta-blogging. perhaps meta-paul can give us more insight on such things. i have a picture around here somewhere of paul posting to my blog, which, at the time i took it, made some sort of mind-bending cosmic sense, that i could post pictures on my blog of paul creating the blog. like photographs of yourself taking photographs or something. whatever, i’d been drinking steadily for hours at that point in time.

1.20.03 – dance motherfucker, dance!

so i’ve been seeing this special chiropractor three times a week lately, trying to finally get enough consistent therapy to fix the damage i did to my neck a few years ago in a ski accident that left me with chronic headaches and dizzy spells. i like this new doctor, plus i feel really lucky to have him, given how few of these specialists there are in the country. today he sent me for some neurological testing designed to get a better picture of the nerve damage. the first test was pretty straight forward, an ultrasound of my upper spine, but the second one, called something like nerve response testing, consisted of hooking up a couple of electrodes to my arm, a few to my head, and then giving me mild electric shocks with this two-pronged cattle-prod sort of thing. as the technician explained the process to me, he mentioned in a off-hand sort of way that this was going to take about forty minutes. “you’re going to shock me for forty minutes??” i asked. he wasn’t kidding. he smeared this electrically conductive gel on my skin under the electrodes (which he repeatedly referred to as “barbeque sauce”) and gave me these mild shocks, not enough to really hurt, but enough to feel like i’d just smashed my funny bone repeatedly, while my arm and sometimes my legs would jerk uncontrollably. the whole experience was weird. the technician was obviously trained to make small talk to keep the patient calm, so i just pestered him with questions about how it worked. “can i see what’s on the computer?” “is that sine wave normal?” “does this test respond to electrostatic interference? what if i turned on my cell phone right now?” “what does the red electrode do? what does the black one do?” the whole experience made me think of that project in high school science class where we ran electrical current through a dissected frog and made the dead frog legs dance. that was weird, too.

1.19.03 – playing grown-up

tomorrow i start my day job – the first (probably of many) day job i’ve had since i started doing this theatre thing a couple of years ago. while i’m pleased to go to work for a company that hired me based on a cover letter that referred to myself as Princess Jennifer, it doesn’t change the fact that the SM offers have dried up so completely that i need a day job. i realize that i’ve been on a luckier-than-most streak, making one show or season lead right into the next, into the next, but deep down i still feel pretty lame for having to resort to being a receptionist for the next couple of months. the real issue here, actually, is my own ego. while i know that day jobs are a normal part of every theatre artist’s financial existence, the type-a in me thinks that i’m supposed to be good at everything. and if i’m good at everything, that includes being good at getting by on theatre work alone. even in a town that has only two professional theatres. andy’s been through several rounds of my 3 am temper tantrums over this, and he’s right about everything – that i’m being egotistical to think that everyone will want to hire me all the time, that i set unreasonably high standards for myself, that i take everything too personally in a business in which hiring decisions are rarely merit-based. he’s also marvelously patient with me, and good at lending me a less neurotic perspective on the world. i’d be lost without him.

it’s good that the BW hired me; trips to the employment agencies last week were especially demoralizing. the agents were condescending, the skills tests insulting, and the job prospects poor. i came home from the first appointment depressed. i went to stanford, for god’s sake! where did i go wrong? i wailed at the unsuspecting andy. he looked at me and said, you don’t like being poor, do you? it was a fair question, given the amount of time i’ve spent worrying about money lately. i guess it depends on the definition of poor. i don’t care if we never have IKEA furniture or matching glassware, i told him. when i have money enough to pay dentist bills and buy modest christmas presents, for groceries, cheap meals out, cat food, a new book now and then, then it’s easy to believe that less is more, and i honestly don’t mind cooking creatively for lack of pots and pans or furnishing my house with thrift store furniture. it gets harder not to measure my success on a monetary scale when the basics get dicey.

this career requires enormous amounts of faith. faith that something else, the next job, will come along, faith that god or fate or providence will open the next door if you can just hang in there and have patience. and with faith comes dark moments of doubt, when i think that i’ll never work again, that i’ve wasted my stanford education on something that was intellectually stimulating but but financially useless. mostly, the darkness comes from the fact that i still can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. its why andy and i are moving to chicago in the fall. theatre is like breathing for us. it’s not a way to making a living, it’s how we live.

1.18.03 – exciting saturday nights

current/recent reading list:

1. the hours, michael cunningham

2. the four agreements, don miguel ruiz

3. fast food nation, eric scholsser

4. the tatooed map, barbara hodgeson

5. the alchemist, paulo coelho

6. war and peace, leo tolstoy

speaking of reading lists, two excellent young men from my stanford past have opened up (intellectual) shop on the internet: mr. tom, and mr. jake. they’re smart, witty, and know lots more about politics than i am willing to.