Seeing Spots: Procrastination Station |
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Mehitobel Wilson: writer, reader, chronic curmudgeon.
Tomboy bombshell cowgirl; lover of funk, attracted to roadsides. Besotted with spots. Friend to sleaze. Admirer of filthy films, fleshy steaks, Hong Kong rap, new felt and pocket-knocking 8-balls; prefers 10 gallons of hat and 4 fingers of Jack. Procrastination here breeds urgency there. Urgency begets sharper fiction. The dream: hone it to a splinter, and sink it deep. So I'm here. 
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Friday, March 22, 2002
Unhinged I’ve lost my mind. I’ve begun to do things that are WHOLLY NEW to me, such as ask for "help." You know what happens when you ask for help? People help, and things get easier. Incredible. I still hate it, though. Nervous breakdowns about work and money are responsible for this. When I asked Jeff for help (see??!!) he tried to, basically, teach me the Zen of Fuck’em. (He was actually far more helpful than that, but I am summing it up here.) The Zen of Fuck’em is hard for me. I’m the AntiZen of Fix’em. I handle the fuckups of others. I’m trying to learn now to walk away, at least at work. To tell all the people who want my help fixing their computer or ordering this or solving that, “You’re on your own.” Which makes me feel like the bad kid in class, selfish and kind of like I’m getting away with something – but I’m not getting away with anything, I’m just confining my performance to my OWN job, instead of helping everyone else with theirs too, which is just too much. I hate that there’s such a thing as “too much” at all. I mean, look at the cops. Cops get paid only a little more than I do, and they COULD DIE. They’ve got their blood up in confrontational adrenaline heat all day long, so what gives me the right to complain, or even to come home tired? I’m also relieved galore. My Frankenstein’s Monster zippo has been MIA all week. “It’ll turn up,” I thought until today. Once I realized it wasn’t going to manifest, and once I panicked thinking that it might get irretrievably buried or pitched in The Packing of the House, I ripped the place apart and crawled around with flashlights until I found it. I FOUND IT. I am myself again. (I’m not that attached to items, you know. It’s just that this lighter is my talisman, my pocket Karloff. I will always find it ironic that my monster adorns a thing that launches FIRE, by the way.) Plus, I’m GOING TO PROVIDENCE in May. Can’t afford it and it’s a terrible time to go for me, day-job-wise, but I had a chat with myself about PRIORITIES and determined that Jeff is easily more important than food or my job. I mean, I HATE my job as it stands – no reason to keep making myself miserable by being excessively conscientious about a job I hate, right? (By “excessively” I mean that even though I’d probably be permitted the time off, I rarely ask because the job’s got to get done, and I’m the one that does it. But nowadays, fuck it, if I’m allowed to leave, I’m leaving.) I mean, shit, they’ve fucked me for five years, the least I can do is start reciprocating. It’s the polite thing to do. More fun for everyone involved that way. All this time I’ve been fighting and arguing and bitching about getting fucked, when what I really need to do is ENTHUSIASTICALLY FUCK THEM RIGHT BACK. That’ll wear them out way quicker. See how it goes, though? Even here, my emotion’s all pointed towards loathing my day job, when it SHOULD be pointed towards being thrilled that I get to hide away in Providence, or towards excitement (not stress. Not stress. Not stress. I’m trying so hard here.)about moving into the new house next weekend. But the Zen of Fuck'em was passed on to me when I was spazzing about money and work, and I earned my green belt by misusing cash and ditching work in order to do something that will make a number of people happy. (I'll be happy. Jeff will be happy, or at least happier. Robert and Jennie will be able to have a rollicking housewarming party while I'm gone, which will make them happy, and likely their guests as well. See? I'm doing this for all of us, noble dahlink that I am.) While I'm up there, I'll work on more fiction (on the snakeskin laptop, natch) and, if I do my job right, I can then depress and appall all who read the stories, which will also make me happy. Dig it! I am the goddamn cheeky monkey of GOOD FUN! There's a local website that has satellite imaging of the whole county, and you can zoom zoom zoom zoom ever deeper until voila, there's a picture of my house TAKEN FROM SPACE. I did that this morning. I sucked at steering the camera, though - remind me not to attempt aviation, because I'd never find my way home. Sunday, March 17, 2002
ARGH Well, my oversensitive touchpad just closed all my browser windows & therefore lost everything I'd just typed here, which wasn't interesting anyway, just complaints about how shitty it is to move, especially when it's 89 degrees outside for no good reason. The important thing is, the machine on which my website was hosted had a meltdown and has been sent to the scrap heap, which means I get to re-upload my entire site to a new machine. This will happen sometime early this week, if all goes well, though it still might take a couple of days for new nameservers (if any) to resolve properly. What I really need, desperately, is a plane ticket (or three) to Providence. IT'S VERY HOT HERE. Friday, March 15, 2002
This DOES NOT SUCK. Okay. I'm listening to the soundtrack for Rave Fever (a strangely addictive Sam Lee movie) on my lil' headphones while playing computer pinball, and though that's about as motherfucking dorky as one can get - laptopping the soundtracks to Chinese disco movies in bed while playing digital pinball - I'm HAVING A BLAST. I'm so blissed I could cry, and I thought you should know.
Losers are cute "What did you do on Savannah St. Pat's, Miss Bel? You're Irish, I bet it was a blast!" "Well, I played with my laptop. Right now I'm wearing headphones and have the Warner Brothers' Exorcist website loaded so tons of samples are ripping my eardrums wide. This is after I exhausted myself at DJTommy.com. Meanwhile, I'm downloading LMF and Sopranos vids off of KaZaA. Robert and I traded the laptop back and forth so we could play pinball. Now he's at the desktop listening to music on his headphones and playing solitaire while drinking Pabst." "Uh, why?" "Because the apartment next to us loaded in 4 kegs and a live band, and because I'm a motherfucking dork, and I revel in it." Yep. I've grown tired of Exorcist soundbites. Off to VisibleSecret.com instead. My lovin' man is at the South by Southwest fest tonight and I can't tell you how much I wish there was a webcam. They're opening the Michigan Music Fest next week and will be at the Fireside the next night, and the Fireside does webcasts, so here's hoping. Sigh. This sucks.
Fee-bel I'm sick. I'm DYING. Ow ow. Stayed home from work yesterday. Shuffled around. Went out at night despite the fact that I was DYING because, see, David Cross (uh, bitchy bald from Mr. Show, wheelchairy from Scary Movie 2, slimy party-man from Ghost World) was at a local club. I had to see him. This did not go well. There was this fluffy emo-pop band, I'm talking entire songs constructed around "woo, woo oooo," which is alright, except there was A MOSH PIT. My level of disgust was ENORMOUS. Mosh pits are FOR PUNK SHOWS. Not for this ooey-ooey stuff. Some frat guy fell on me - in my booth, knocking over our beers - and, you know, a fall is fine, but stand the fuck up, don't decide to take a cozy rest on my lap, motherfucker. So I whaled on him and used his kidney as the kickpedal to jumpstart his ass out of the booth. I hope I got germs all over him, too. Anyway, this is exactly why I'm not supposed to go to shows without large male companions - I need to be restrained. There's already a lot of physical energy at shows, and now and then that physicality crawls into my anger and I get really violent. I can control myself, but barely - the effort has made me faint in the past. Usually I just leave. But last night I couldn't leave, because David Cross hadn't even come on yet. He turned out to be not-that-funny so I left anyway. Or maybe he was funny and I was just sick. Well, he was funny, but any snide bastard with a microphone is AS funny. Anyway, this weekend is St. Patrick's Day in Savannah. I know it's St. Patrick's Day everywhere, but Savannah's party is huge (for us.) Considering that the city is only 2.5 square miles, an influx of 500,000 screaming drunks is HUGE. Most of it's concentrated on River Street, but there are bars all over, and people start crawling at daybreak. I'm not lying. It's like Mardi Gras. They sell beads and hats and glowsticks. (Last night one of my bartenders gave me some beads. I did not want them, I hate them, but Robert explained that if I wore them, the frat boys would think I earned them the tit-showing way, and therefore wouldn't bother me for more. So they were a protective talisman.) Our house is on the parade route. This means that, if I find parking when I get home from work today, the car won't move all weekend. It certainly won't move during the parade tomorrow, which means it's a great spot for people to put their beers. They can, and will, also pee on it. Yay! Just like last year! Ah, whatever. It all washes off. Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Proficient in deficiencies My body's trying to tell me that one can not live on Marlboros, swiss cheese, and office coffee alone. I'm trying to tell it to wait until payday, at which point I'll happily buy it some nutrients. I really need to remember to take my vitamins. My website's down again. It goes up, it goes down. I play hit-my-site like whack-a-mole. GOT it! Missed it, missed it, GOT it! Anyway, vitamins: I have to take them, see, because I have to keep myself not just conscious, but active. Because I have to pack. To move. Not out of town and up to Providence, where I'd like to be, but into a big house (with a backyard for my heavybag) with cable (Sopranos pour moi!) and a private office and cheap rent. Being there will be exciting. GETTING there will suck cracked-n-scabby balls. The sheer volume of books I own is staggering. Leopard fur is heavy. And all my damn collectible monster toys and doodads are impossible to pack. Ah, gad, the books... I have three weeks to pack and move, which means I have two and a half weeks to work up the energy to even start. Vitamins, vitamins... Monday, March 04, 2002
The Land of 8,000 Words ... became The Land of Way the Hell More Than That, Even. The story, "Growing Out of It," will appear in Necro Publication's next chapbook split, along with "Immortality" by Charlee Jacob. The book's due out in May and will be a limited edition of numbered softcovers and lettered hardcovers. The title of the chapbook itself has yet to be determined. This is pretty neato. Necro's first chapbook selection is available now: Partners in Chyme, starring Ed Lee and Ryan Harding. It's a foxy little book. Dig it. My parents are NOT allowed to read "Growing Out Of It." They threatened to buy the book anyway; I threatened to cover all the parents-not-allowed bits with post-it notes. They'd be here in two shakes of a slut's ass to wash my mouth out with soap, no lie. China Mieville's hooligan mug is all over the front cover of the current Locus. There's an interview inside. The man gives great, incredibly insightful interviews. The Scar will be out in April. The book is currently keeping my building from blowing away - it's almost as long as Perdido Street Station, and so far, well, I wanted to take the day off work so I could keep reading. Now that I've laid down many thousands of words for a single solitary story - one plotline, not a whole world's worth - I better understand how people can write novels. I can even see how it might be nice. Work, but nice work, in a way that feels very different than the single hard expulsion of a short story. I saw The Wonder Boys this weekend. Loved it. Not a damn thing wrong with that movie. It was amazing. Big thanks to Adam for the recommendation. |