Background Noise

something wicked

Thunderstorms should be rolling through today, bringing some relief from the heat that has kept us holed up in the house next to the air conditioner for the past couple of days.

The humidity is doing bizarre things to my head and with all the cash I lay out for gels and cremes and anti-inflammatories for my hair, there is still no product out there that will combat 99% humidity. Yeah, Fructis, not even you.

Last night I cracked open my computer planning to catch up on some email and do a little shopping while Eli watched The Contender. But first I glanced through my blog barrel to see if there were any new blogs to check out. And that’s how I found Big Picture Small Office. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and I sat on the couch completely absorbed in it, reading entry after entry, unable to stop myself because it hurt so good. The blog is written by an anonymous VP in an unnamed corporation, and it is all about soulless corporate management. This should be required reading for…well, everyone. There is a delightful cast of characters like The Black Widow (HR), Rigor Mortis (Head of Legal), and Whiney Baby (Corporate Communications). The way the author reports the misguided daily antics of these characters is not humorous but introspective and sad in a way that, well, you should just read for yourself. I recommend starting with the four part series called Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I felt so down after reading that I had to watch Project Runway to refresh my soul and remind myself that there is still good in the world. 

a necessary function

I was in the middle of updating last night about my drug test and our day at the beach when my computer beeped and then went black. It turned off just as I had just finished typing my take on the severely overweight woman sitting near us at the beach who was breastfeeding her three year old child all day.

Wouldn’t it be cool if every time you were about to type something shitty and mean your computer just gave you a reality check and turned itself off?

The internet would empty out like a bowel full of tainted meat.

on the DL

I can’t believe how much I’ve been updating lately. I think it’s true that any activity leads to more of that activity. It’s like a theory I have about sex where if you abstain for a while it becomes less important. But the minute you go for it again you can’t get enough and you feel compelled to do it all the time. Look at me talking about sex and writing habits like they’re a universal condition instead of my own private problem.

Anyway, I’ve been working a lot lately, and I finally seem to be finding a groove. Which of course means that it will be disrupted because that’s what happens when I get comfortable.

Eli took Joey to the park yesterday afternoon so I could work for a couple of hours before our company came over in the evening. It was a relief to have the house to myself, and I celebrated by turning the stereo up loud and cranking out a bunch of articles. If you’re wondering what the articles are about or where you can read them, I’m sorry to say that this is a ghostwriting gig and I’ve signed a contract that lets the buyer remove my name and edit the articles as they see fit. I know there are writers out there who think that this is not a legitimate writing job, but rather a skanky, low-rate, rent-a-writer gig that gives a bad name to the art of writing. Fortunately, I don’t look at content jobs like that. Maybe I’m just too greedy. I see it as money in the bank and if the person is paying me well enough, they can remove every noun from the article if they like and I won’t complain one tiny bit about my art being sacrificed (real writers can be terribly dramatic).

Things like this make me glad I’m not a real writer.

Anyway, aside from the gritty pseudo-writing jobs I’m doing to help pay the bills (oh, who am I kidding, I’m saving for an iPod), I’ve also been submitting articles to various web-based publications. I’ve had several things accepted and published but the only problem with that is I write my journal under a pseudonym (I hope this isn’t a surprise to anyone) so it makes it hard to advertise my stuff here.

I know I shouldn’t be ashamed of my blog, and I’m not. I don’t write too much here that anyone who knows me in life would be surprised about. The thing that keeps me on the down low is that I can’t stand to think of being judged professionally by what I write here. Much like how I wouldn’t go into an interview casually as though I’m sitting down for a chat with a friend, I wouldn’t want my future possible employer knowing everything about my personal life and the things that bounce around in my head, and use that to make a judgment about my science. This would probably be different if I worked in a creative field, but I don’t. I work in a field where having a personality is secondary to having good analytical skills and being smart.

And maybe that’s just it. Maybe smart people don’t do this kind of thing.
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Beyond the Gecko: Buddy on Demand.

Buddy on Demand is a cool new inflatable car companion for drivers. This new feature comes from the women’s car insurance company, Shielas’ Wheels. No matter what state you’re in, you can get a quick auto insurance quote
conveniently, without having to go to several different sites to comparison shop.

the contender

I pulled a muscle in my neck working on my archives the other night. Eli had two episodes of The Contender on Tivo and he wanted me to watch with him. I decided I could sit on the couch and “watch” while setting up my archive. I’ve been keeping this journal for months and it has always bugged me that the archives were such a mess. But it wasn’t until recently when I had to go in looking for something and it took me longer than three minutes to find it that it occurred to me that I should fix it.

(Here is the finished product)

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about The Contender. First off, boxing is a great sport, and I like a good boxing match as much as the next girl. There’s nothing better than two ripped guys with hard bodies (and faces that look like they were chewed up by dogs and left to heal on their heads) beating the hell out of each other for sport. It’s a pretty great show and I enjoyed it last season. The thing that bugs me is that they go out of their way to show the fighter’s family (and sometimes children) cheering for them on the sidelines during the fight, encouraging them to beat the brain damage into the other guy. I like a little separation of emotion when it comes to sports where the main goal is to use your body as a weapon, delivering and accepting brutal punishment on your organs as the object of the game. I’d rather think of the guys as rock em sock em robots who aren’t real people with real lives and real ambitions and real emotions, but simply fighting machines, born into this world to take a beatdown.

I’m sure I’m thinking about it too much. When I tried to talk to Eli about it, to see if he ever gets emotional about watching two bleeding guys punching each other in a ring while the people who love them scream encouragement from the sidelines, he looked at me like I’d suffered some sort of head trauma myself. “It’s a sport, Jaeme.”

Well, yeah, I know.

This led to a discussion about how boxing is like kittens playing compared to Ultimate Fighting. In UFC fighting they mix it up with street fighting, martial arts, and basically the fighters do anything possible to try to kill their opponent. They don’t actually kill them, and there are rules like no eye-gouging, but it’s still very brutal and bloody. I can’t even watch the Strongest Man competition without feeling a cold chill run up my spine because I know what those guys are doing to their bodies. Watching some burly muscle head try to pull a fucking train with only his body and a rope, waiting for his legs to buckle and break in half or his biceps to separate from the bone…ugh, it’s not for me.

So yeah, I kind of half watched The Contender while fixing my archive, and now my neck is jacked from sitting on the couch bent over my laptop for two hours. I just feel an urgency to get things in order lately because if I start back to work soon, I will have much less time for things like playing around in my blog. I plan to continue updating because it is so easy, but that will probably be the extent of my extra-curricular internet activities.

And I’m saying if I start back to work because nothing is set in stone yet. There are still the background checks and negotiations to get through.

Oh yeah, I’ve also been updating my book log, and I know it’s one of those things most people don’t get into, but I’ve been picking out some real shit at the library so I want to remind you that I am ALWAYS open to a book suggestion. In fact, to be a good sport, I’ll start. I recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Your turn.

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links I love

Sometimes I wonder why people do this. Why do we write about our lives on the internet and share stories and experiences for strangers to read and comment on or empathize with. I’ve never been able to figure it out exactly so I keep writing my stuff and reading other people’s stuff and I try not to think about how weird it all is.

I have a list of links of my favorite journals written by other people over there on the side. I read a lot of things on the internet, but my list of links are the sites I visit daily, compulsively, and they’re the ones I wonder about if I’m away from my computer for any length of time. I’ve never exchanged a word with some of the people in my links, others I know a little bit, and then there are the ones I’ve known for years. So since I can’t figure out why I write this page, I will tell you why I read the others.

Because I say so! I love Jodi. She’s a mysterious girl and she’s perfected the art of keeping an interesting blog while maintaining her privacy. She’ll always tell you what she’s eating for lunch or the abstract things she’s thinking about but she keeps from vomiting up the personal details of her life in every entry. I bet you didn’t know she’s a zookeeper and acrobat. That’s how good Jodi is. She’s got this blogging thing down to a science and even if you’ve read every entry in her extensive archive, you really never know quite what that girl is up to.

Coffee Grind. Kathy is a cool mom and she gives good mom advice. But I liked her even before I cared about that stuff. She has a good sense of humor, is funny, and makes beautiful jewelry. Also, she has issues with her own mother and that makes me feel like we have some kind of common bond.

Crazy Aunt Purl. Sometimes it’s about knitting, but mostly it’s not. I don’t remember how I found this one, but the best thing about Laurie is she is interesting and funny and updates a lot. She has a great spirit and I think that’s why I started reading her journal. I admire people who can go through a horrible experience and resist the temptation of throwing a pity party on their blog about it. Laurie handles her pain the right way—through drink and telling hilarious stories.

Fleamail. I’ve tried to cool it about my obsessive love for the Red Hot Chili Peppers but this is one fact about me that has not changed in so many years that it has become like my genetic code. I have blonde hair, green eyes and I love the red hot chili peppers. If someday people form a cult around them like they’ve done with other bands in the past, I will probably be the leader and run away from my life to live on the road and follow the band as the lead pepperhead. I LOVE THEM. I’ve loved them since I was a teenager and so being able to read a journal written by one of them makes me feel like we’re friends. I am not a crazy stalker, I just like to know what they’re up to. And I wish Anthony Kiedis would start a journal. Though I would hate if he kept it on myspace.

Fly in the Honey. She’s a teacher and she’s funny and I like her style. I don’t know her beyond what she writes about in her journal but that’s good enough for me.

House in Progress. I have a secret addiction to home renovation. I love doing new things to my house and I get a voyeuristic thrill from seeing inside other people’s homes. Reading this journal comes from the same compulsion in my brain that makes me walk the neighborhood at dusk so I can look into my neighbors windows. I’m not a peeping Tom, I’m just as happy with an empty house as one filled with people because I’m in it for the décor. I like to see what people do with their walls, lighting and woodwork and sometimes it gives me ideas for things to do with my own living space. I also obsessively check out houses on newenglandmoves.com because they have pictures of the insides as well as the outsides of the houses on the market. And I've spent enough time there to tell ya, new englanders love their hideous flowered wallpaper.

Isobel Divine. Issy and I met when we were writing on a site called OpenDiary many years ago (I think it was '98, but I’ve lost track of my old opendiary files so I’m not sure) We’ve spent hours on ICQ and though nether of us have the time for that anymore, we still keep in touch through email. I’ve lost touch with everyone from OpenDiary except for Isobel. She is my oldest online friend.

Loobylu. I like Claire because she is in Australia and her weather is opposite mine. It’s a trip when she talks about summertime at Christmas and the blazing heat during a blizzard. She is an artist and draws beautiful pictures. Her blog is like candy.

McSweeney’s. I can’t sum this one up. Just that every time I go there I get stuck for hours reading stuff and marveling at how brilliant the site is. If you’ve ever been there then you know. Web crack.

Mimi Smartypants. I don’t know Mimi but I wish I did. When I’m feeling like the world is full of ordinary days and ordinary people talking about ordinary things I read Mimi and remember that there are some seriously weird cats out there. From her writing you know Mimi is smart, and she views the world through a lens of absurdity. If we all had a map to represent the nerve tracts in our brains, most would look like a roadway system in the Midwest, with order and logic and grids. Mimi’s would look like a spirograph gone terrifically out of control.

Rhapsodie. I found Joshua’s journal through SleepDirt Dan. They are brothers but their writing styles are quite different. Joshua is a hothead like me, and his journal is full of lovely rants about the stupidity in the world. He has road rage and corporate frustration and I can usually relate to what he throws down.

Sleep Dirt. I’ve been reading Dan’s journal for a long time. I like Dan for many of the same reasons I like Mimi. It makes me happy to know that there are people in the world who think about things the way that he does. Dan alternates between writing clear, humorous entries about the moments in his day to writing beautiful cryptic prose about how he’s feeling about the things going on in his life. I wish Dan was my neighbor because I could imagine calling him up at midnight when I can’t sleep to come over and watch cartoons. And he seems like the kind of person who would be fun in a debate about ordinary things like the pros and cons of sugar-ball-shaped versus flake-based breakfast cereals and the merits of different fruits taking into consideration taste, shape, color and how easily they rot.  Then again, maybe because I’ve been reading his journal for so long I’ve made him into a cartoon character in my mind. My perfect imaginary friend. Cartoon Dan enjoys competitive skee ball, dive-bar karaoke and watching movies about gay cowboys simply because it’s art. Real Dan is probably much cooler than Cartoon Dan

Chaos Theory. Sherry is the only mom journal I read regularly because sometimes mom journals aggravate me. She has two little girls and she writes about the experience of being a mom with so much grace that she makes me want to be a better mom. I don’t think I’ve ever read her journal and disagreed with something she’s written about parenting. Which is strange because that rarely happens when it comes to parenting. The only thing I can think of not to like about her is that she watches Canadian Idol.